See Your Site in 3D AND Satellite at the Same Time

"Where exactly IS this point cloud?" — Every client meeting, ever.

You're presenting to a client. A beautiful 3D point cloud fills the screen—62 million colorful points captured from this morning's drone flight. The terrain details are crisp. The stockpile geometry is precise. The technology is impressive.

Then the client asks: "Can you show me where the access road connects to the highway?"

You rotate the point cloud. Pan around. Zoom out. But a point cloud exists in its own geometric universe. There's no highway visible. No street names. No reference points that a non-technical viewer would recognize.

"It's... somewhere off this edge," you say, gesturing vaguely.

The impressive technology demo just became an orientation puzzle.

The Context Problem

Point clouds are geometrically precise but contextually barren.

According to FARO, "a point cloud is a collection of points of data plotted in 3D space." Each point captures the real-world position of a surface with millimeter accuracy. The geometry is undeniable.

But as Mindkosh notes, "while applicable for visualizing construction projects, point clouds lack meaningful semantic information."

A point cloud tells you exactly where something is in coordinate space. It doesn't tell you what that location means in the real world—which neighborhood, which property, which side of the river.

This matters because your audience isn't always coordinate-literate.

Engineers and surveyors navigate by Eastings and Northings. They understand that 525,478.32, 5,040,156.78 means "the northeast corner of the site." But project managers navigate by landmarks. Clients navigate by "the building next to the gas station."

When your visualization only speaks one language, you're excluding everyone who doesn't.

The Traditional Workaround

The standard solution is running two applications simultaneously.

QGIS or ArcGIS on one monitor showing the satellite basemap. Your point cloud viewer on another monitor showing the 3D data. You mentally correlate positions between the two, switching your gaze back and forth, trying to maintain spatial orientation across separate interfaces.

This works. But it's friction.

ArcGIS Pro allows linked 2D and 3D views—but it requires ArcGIS Pro. QGIS makes it possible to display multiple map views side by side—but again, this requires QGIS, a separate application from your point cloud viewer.

Dual View: 3D and Map Synchronized

Viizor's Dual View solves this by combining both perspectives in a single interface.

The screen splits vertically. On one side: your 3D point cloud with full Potree visualization—rotation, zoom, measurement tools, classification views. On the other side: a satellite basemap (via Mapbox) showing the same geographic area.

The views are synchronized:

• Pan in 3D → the map follows
• Zoom on the map → the 3D view updates
• Draw a vector on the map → it appears in 3D with correct elevation

The divider between views is draggable. Want more map? Slide it. Need full-screen 3D? Collapse the map. The "Swap" button reverses which side shows which view.

When your client asks about the highway connection, you don't rotate the point cloud hoping to find it. You point at the map: "Here's the highway. Here's our access road. And in the 3D view, you can see the grade change where they'll connect."

The point cloud provides precision. The map provides meaning.

What the Map Shows

The satellite basemap provides multiple layers of context:

Geographic orientation. North is up. Roads have names (if you zoom out enough). Rivers, lakes, and coastlines establish regional position. Your site exists in a recognizable world.

Surrounding infrastructure. Adjacent properties, existing roads, utility corridors, water features. The elements that constrain or enable your project but don't appear in your point cloud because they're outside the survey boundary.

Historical reference. Satellite imagery captures the "before" condition—what the site looked like before current construction. Comparing current 3D data against historical imagery shows what's changed.

Footprint visualization. Your point cloud's geographic extent appears as a polygon on the map. You can see exactly which area the survey covers relative to the surrounding environment.

Orthophoto Integration: Your Imagery, Your Context

Beyond generic satellite basemaps, Viizor allows you to load your own orthophoto imagery directly into the map view. This transforms the map from "generic context" to "your project, your data."

Why this matters

Satellite basemaps from Mapbox are convenient, but they have real limitations:

• Outdated imagery. Satellite photos might be months or years old. That excavation you're surveying? It doesn't exist in the satellite view because the image predates the work.
• Resolution limits. Public satellite imagery typically tops out at 50cm/pixel. Your drone orthomosaic might be 2-3cm/pixel—20 times more detail.
• No customization. You can't adjust what the satellite captured. Your orthomosaic captures exactly what matters for your project.

Loading your orthophoto

Viizor imports orthophotos in standard GeoTIFF format (.tif, .tiff)—the same format produced by Pix4D, Metashape, OpenDroneMap, and virtually every photogrammetry software.

If your drone survey produced both a point cloud and an orthomosaic—as most photogrammetry workflows do—you now have both products visible simultaneously. The orthophoto shows the photographic reality: colors, textures, visual features. The point cloud shows the geometric reality: elevations, surfaces, precise measurements.

Practical benefits for surveyors

• Temporal consistency. Your orthophoto and point cloud were captured at the same moment. The satellite basemap shows conditions from an unknown date—possibly months or years ago.
• Visual documentation. The orthophoto provides photographic evidence of site conditions at the time of survey. Combined with 3D measurements, you have complete documentation for reports and legal purposes.
• Feature identification. Some features are easier to identify in imagery than in point clouds—painted markings on pavement, vegetation boundaries, material stockpile types, equipment positions. Having both views lets you digitize with confidence.
• Client communication. Clients understand photographs intuitively. Showing your high-resolution orthophoto alongside 3D terrain data makes your deliverables immediately comprehensible to non-technical stakeholders.

Opacity and layer controls

Opacity sliders let you blend between your orthophoto and the satellite basemap. Fade your orthophoto to 50% and you can compare current conditions against historical satellite imagery. Set it to 100% and work entirely with your own high-resolution data.

You can load multiple orthophotos—perhaps from different survey dates—and toggle between them. This enables visual change detection: what did the site look like in January versus June? Where did material move? What structures appeared or disappeared?

Drawing Across Both Views

Here's where Dual View becomes more than visualization: you can draw on either view, and the geometry synchronizes.

When the Vector 3D tool is active, clicking on the satellite map or orthophoto creates vertices just like clicking in 3D. The system:

1. Takes the map click position (latitude/longitude)
2. Transforms it to your project's coordinate system
3. Queries the point cloud for ground elevation at that position
4. Creates a 3D vertex with accurate X, Y, and Z coordinates

This means you can trace features that are clearly visible on imagery—property boundaries, road centerlines, building footprints, pavement markings—and have them appear correctly positioned in your 3D scene with proper elevation.

The process works bidirectionally. Vectors drawn in 3D appear on the map. AOI polygons drawn in 3D show their geographic footprint. Measurements taken in 3D can be verified against map distances.

Elevation Snapping from Map Drawing

When you draw on a 2D map, there's an obvious question: what about elevation?

A satellite image or orthophoto is flat. It shows X and Y, but not Z. Yet your point cloud exists in three dimensions. How does a 2D map click become a 3D point?

Viizor's map drawing tools solve this with elevation snapping:

The result is a 3D vertex positioned correctly in space, even though you clicked on a 2D image.

If no point cloud data exists at the click location (you clicked outside the survey boundary), the system falls back to a default elevation—typically the mean ground level of the loaded cloud. This prevents orphan vertices floating at Z=0.

Use Cases for Dual View

Navigation Synchronization

The view synchronization isn't just visual—it's navigational.

When you pan or rotate in the 3D view, the map updates to show the same approximate area. When you click a location on the map, the 3D view can fly to that position.

This creates a bidirectional workflow:

1. Use the map to find a location by geographic context ("the northwest corner of the property")
2. Click to center both views on that location
3. Use the 3D view for detailed analysis of that specific area
4. Use the map to verify the location relative to surroundings

The mental model is consistent: both views show the same place, from different perspectives. Changes in one propagate to the other.

The Presentation Difference

There's a psychological shift when context accompanies precision.

For technical audiences, the point cloud is sufficient. They understand coordinate systems, they can navigate geometric space, they trust measurements derived from 3D data.

For everyone else—clients, project managers, regulatory reviewers, legal teams—context provides the bridge between your data and their understanding.

The surveyor who can switch from "this stockpile contains 4,847 cubic meters" to "here's the stockpile in the orthophoto, right behind the main plant building, and here's the 3D model showing its geometry" is speaking both languages.

That flexibility isn't just presentation skill. It's having tools that support both modes of communication simultaneously.

What Synchronized Views Enable

Faster orientation. New viewers understand where they are immediately. The map or orthophoto provides the "you are here" reference that pure 3D lacks.

Confident navigation. Moving through a point cloud becomes purposeful when the map shows your destination. You're not exploring randomly—you're navigating to specific locations.

Cross-reference verification. Measurements in 3D can be sanity-checked against map distances. Features identified in 3D can be verified against orthophoto imagery.

Documentation completeness. Screenshots that include both views provide more complete documentation than either view alone. The 3D shows geometry; the orthophoto shows photographic reality; the map shows geographic context.

Reduced explanation overhead. When context is visible, you spend less time explaining where things are and more time discussing what they mean.