LiDAR: measuring with laser, and seeing under vegetation
What LiDAR is, how it differs from photogrammetry, and when it becomes necessary.
LiDAR — Light Detection And Ranging — measures distance by firing a laser and timing its return. Repeated hundreds of thousands of times per second, it produces a three-dimensional point cloud.
Unlike photogrammetry, it does not infer shape from images: it measures it directly.
What really sets it apart
It sees through vegetation. That is its decisive property, and what you are buying.
A laser beam slips between leaves: part of it bounces off the canopy, part reaches the ground. Separating those returns gives you the terrain beneath the trees — something no photograph can provide, since a photograph only sees what is not hidden.
It does not care about light. LiDAR carries its own source: it works into the sun, under overcast skies, and at night. Where photogrammetry fails for lack of contrast — uniform surfaces, hard shadows — the laser carries on.
When photogrammetry is enough
LiDAR costs more, in hardware and in processing. It is not always warranted.
| Photogrammetry | LiDAR | |
|---|---|---|
| Open ground | ✅ enough | overkill |
| Under tree cover | ✅ essential | |
| Visual rendering, texture | ✅ natural | colourless cloud |
| Thin lines: cables, railings | difficult | ✅ |
| Cost | moderate | high |
Many missions combine the two: laser for geometry, photography for appearance.
What Waypoint360 does, and what it does not
We process no point clouds. No classification, no terrain model — that belongs to specialised software.
What we cover: the preparation and compliance of the flight carrying the sensor, the logbook, the mission documents. A LiDAR survey is still a flight, with its zones and its declarations.
And the directory lets you find an operator who declares survey and mapping among their activities.
Going further
- Photogrammetry — the other route, and the commoner one.
- GSD — the equivalent notion on the imaging side.