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LidarKit

View LAS and LAZ files in your browser

Drop a point cloud in and look at it in 3D. Nothing is uploaded, and there is no size limit.

Drop your LAS or LAZ file here

or choose a file

LAS 1.0–1.4 · multi-gigabyte files welcome

…or open one from a URL. A .copc.laz file streams straight from the host — only the parts you look at are read. Anything else shows its full metadata without downloading the points.

What you can check in a few seconds

A viewer earns its place when it answers a question faster than opening the file in desktop software would. The common ones:

  • Is this file what I was told it is? Extent, point count and density are visible immediately.
  • Was it actually classified? Colour by classification. A delivery that is entirely class 1 was never classified, whatever the paperwork says.
  • Does it have a coordinate system? The panel below the view reports the CRS, or tells you plainly that none is embedded.
  • Is there noise to clean up? Stray points far above or below the surface stand out at once when coloured by elevation.
  • Did the scan capture colour? The RGB option appears only when the file actually carries it.

Controls

ActionMouseTouch
OrbitDragOne finger drag
ZoomScroll wheelPinch
PanRight-drag, or shift + dragTwo finger drag
ReframeReset viewReset view

How large files are handled

The file is decoded in a Web Worker, streaming through the same WebAssembly build of laz-perf that powers the converter. Points are taken at an even stride across the whole file rather than from the beginning, so what you see is a fair sample of the entire scan, not just its first corner.

The display budget is 2 million points. A 40-million-point scan is shown at every twentieth point; the viewer tells you the stride it chose and the true total. Your file is never modified — this is a display limit, not a conversion. If you need every point, use the desktop tools; if you need a different format, convert it.

One detail worth knowing, because it is a common bug in browser point cloud viewers: LAS coordinates are usually projected, in the hundreds of thousands of metres. Passed straight to a GPU as 32-bit floats, they quantise to a visible lattice. This viewer subtracts the cloud centre before the cast, which is why a UTM cloud looks smooth here.

What this viewer does not do

Deliberately kept out of scope, so the parts that exist are fast and correct:

  • No editing, cropping or filtering — use CloudCompare or PDAL.
  • No measurement tools.
  • No profile or cross-section views.

Level-of-detail streaming does exist, but only for files that carry the index it needs: drop a .copc.laz here, or open one from a URL, and it streams instead. See the COPC viewer.

For anything on that list, CloudCompare is free and excellent. This is for the case where you have a file, a browser, and one question.

Frequently asked questions

How do I open a LAZ file without installing software?
Drop the .laz file onto the viewer above. It is decoded on your own machine and rendered with WebGL, so there is nothing to install and nothing to upload. LAS files work the same way.
Are my files uploaded to view them?
No. There is no upload endpoint and no server component — the file is read through the browser's File API, decoded in a Web Worker, and drawn straight to a canvas. This makes it usable for survey data you are not permitted to send to a third party.
Is there a file size limit?
No limit on the file itself. Very large clouds are subsampled for display — the viewer keeps up to 2 million points and takes an even spread across the whole file — so a multi-gigabyte scan opens without exhausting memory. The file is only read, never altered.
Why does it show fewer points than my file contains?
Because drawing every point of a 300-million-point scan would exhaust GPU memory and drop the frame rate to nothing. The viewer displays an even sample and tells you the stride it used. The full point count is always shown alongside so you know what you are looking at.
Can I colour the points by classification?
Yes. Choose Classification in the colour menu to shade points by their ASPRS class — ground, vegetation, building, water and the rest — which is the quickest way to check whether a delivered file was actually classified. Elevation, intensity and embedded RGB are also available, with RGB shown only when the file carries it.
How do I move around the point cloud?
Drag to orbit, scroll to zoom, and hold shift or use the right mouse button to pan. On a touchscreen, one finger orbits and two fingers pinch to zoom and pan. Reset view returns to the framed starting position.
Which point formats does the viewer support?
Point data record formats 0, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 and 8, across LAS 1.0 to 1.4. Formats 4, 5, 9 and 10 store full waveform data and are not supported. RGB colour is read from formats 2, 3, 7 and 8.
Do I need a powerful computer?
Any machine with a modern browser and working WebGL will do, including phones. Rendering is one draw call, so the limit is usually GPU memory rather than speed — and the subsampling budget is set to stay within what integrated graphics handle comfortably.

Need a different format instead? Convert LAZ to LAS or compress LAS to LAZ.