Visualising the simulation
HELIOS++ laser scanning simulations can be visualised using the helios-live entrypoint.
helios-live takes the same arguments as the HELIOS++ command line call (Optional arguments) and the additional flag o3d. This flag activates the live visualisation, which is based on open3d (Note: Open3D is currently only supported for Python versions 3.8, 3.9, 3.10 and 3.11).
The example below shows how to execute the als_toyblocks survey with helios-live for a live simulation visualisation.
Command line:
helios-live data/surveys/toyblocks/als_toyblocks.xml --lasOutput -o3dUpon running the script, a new window opens, which shows the trajectory and the scanned points live.
Once the simulation is completed, the window remains open and interactive, allowing the user to take a closer look at the results.
The visualization can be disabled, leaving only the pyhelios simulation itself, by omitting the flag -o3d.
As of version 0.18, open3d is not compatible with numpy>=2.0.0. If helios-live crashes, check your version of numpy. The issue can be fixed by installing v1.26.4:
mamba install numpy=1.26.4