Trying to implement LIDAR / Point Cloud graphic features, new to UE4 and game engines

[anonymous_user_e59b32e3]

@RhythmScript;330561

What I would maybe advise you do is try to break up the traces… If you search the forums you’ll find someone who created a macro which processes a ForLoop across multiple ticks. So you could use this to process, say, 500 traces every tick. That SHOULDN’T be so slow as to cause an appreciable framerate drop, I wouldn’t think (traces are fairly cheap as long as you aren’t trying to process 90,000 of them in a single tick!)

Thanks for the replay, that was a great idea. The macro was super helpful!

Check it out in action (from left to right in that little area: bush, chair, UE4 material previewer, rock):

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I’m getting happy with the resolution of the effect, it’s starting to look promising on complex geometry:

Now I just need a way to efficiently render the points. My ideas are:

1. Instanced Static Meshes. Instead of using a draw debug point, I could use an instanced static mesh of, say, a small cube. From my understanding, using an instanced static mesh is efficient because it doesn’t create a new instance every time the mesh is drawn. Is this feasible, and if so, how to implement?
2. Procedural Mesh Generation. Could it be possible to take the points of projection in 3D space, store them in an array, and create a single mesh using the projection points as vertex points? Would it then be possible to display that mesh as just vertex points?
3. Sprites? Aren’t 2D graphics less expensive than 3D graphics? Can I simply display a 2D square at each point? It’s essentially what I’m doing now, but I’ve read that the debug points are an expensive process.

Any help, ideas, insight, or examples?

Thanks in advance.