The 3DGeo Research Group is proud to announce the release of their novel ray-tracing based laser scanning simulator HELIOS++!
HELIOS++ is a general-purpose simulation software for virtual laser scanning data acquisition. Such data can be used to complement real data in many use cases. Some examples include the generation of training data for machine learning, especially deep learning, for the validation of algorithms working on point clouds, for acquisition parameter surveys, or for experimentation with novel sensors.
We offer precompiled versions of HELIOS++ v1.0.0 for Windows and Linux as downloads – available alongside the open source code on GitHub. We invite you to become familiar with the software by taking a look into the wiki. HELIOS++ is licensed under GPLv3 and LGPLv3.
One of the novel features of HELIOS++ are the Python bindings pyhelios. They allow advanced users to interact with the HELIOS++ simulation using Python, including a live data viewer:
Along with the release of HELIOS++, we present the accompanying paper – available as a preprint on arXiv:
Winiwarter, L., Esmorís Pena, A., Weiser, H., Anders, K., Martínez Sanchez, J., Searle, M., Höfle, B. (2021): Virtual laser scanning with HELIOS++: A novel take on ray tracing-based simulation of topographic 3D laser scanning. arXiv:2101.09154. [cs.CV]
More information is also available on the project website: https://uni-heidelberg.de/helios
HELIOS++ is funded in part by the BMBF in the frame of the LOKI project (funding code: 03G0890) and by the DFG in the frame of the SYSSIFOSS project (project number: 411263134).
