[QGIS-Developer] 3D View Interface Usability

[Martin Dobias]

Hi Jed

Thanks a lot for your feedback. You have summarized it pretty well - camera
controls in QGIS 3D are indeed largely based on Google Earth controls which
I found relatively intuitive at the time when starting the work in 2017. We
have realized over time that this kind of navigation is not enough for
various use cases, including the one you have mentioned (to look at 20th
floor of a building). There is definitely interest to improve it,
especially with point clouds the limitations in the navigation are much
easier to see.

Editing vector data in 3D is near the top of the wish list for many users,
so I think we will get to it sooner or later :-) Totally agreed that
snapping to point clouds should be available to simplify data capturing.
Probably an option to view the scene from multiple angles at once would be
also useful for good quality editing (e.g. when editing vertices of a
building in 3D).

It looks like you already have ideas how to improve things - I would love
to hear your thoughts how to make the navigation better. Please feel free
to add links to videos of other software where you think the camera control
behaves according to your expectations...

Regards
Martin


On Mon, Jan 4, 2021 at 12:33 AM Jed Frechette <jedfrechette at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Happy New Year to all,
>
> Recently I’ve been spending time playing with the 3D view in QGIS and
> I’m hoping to start a discussion about the UI and whether or not it
> might make sense to consider some changes to that UI based on what the
> intended uses of the 3D view are.
>
> Since I haven’t been directly involved in QGIS development before I’m
> approaching this from a user’s perspective and thought I should start
> with my observations and assumptions in case they’re radically
> off-base compared to what the core developers envision for the 3D
> view.
>
> Looking at the current state of the 3D view it seems heavily
> influenced by Google Earth. In particular, it seems to be primarily
> designed to simply display content that was created elsewhere. In the
> context of the rest of the QGIS UI, it is much more similar to the
> Print Layout view than the main 2D Map view. From a workflow
> perspective, you work with your data in the main 2D Map and then
> switch to the Print Layout or 3D views when you want to render that
> data in a different context.
>
> I think now is a good time to start thinking about a potentially
> bigger role for the 3D view because of the upcoming point cloud
> support. I know that interactive tools are out of scope for the
> current point cloud project, however, I think as soon as users can
> visualize point clouds in QGIS they will want to start interacting
> with them. Once the novelty wears off, simply rendering a point cloud
> in 3D is pretty ugly and not terribly useful. However, being able to
> digitize 3D points or lines with snapping to that point cloud is
> extremely useful and that type of work will be difficult to do without
> a well-designed 3D viewport.
>
> Even without new interactive tools, I think the more volumetric and
> often unevenly distributed nature of most point cloud datasets will
> make the current Google Earth style navigation less intuitive than it
> is when dealing with the mostly 2D data it was designed to interact
> with. For example, with the current camera controls you can’t track
> along the world z-axis so you lose a degree of freedom when the camera
> is horizontal. If you are looking at a street level building facade
> and want to move to looking at the 20th floor you can’t just track
> along the z-axis to get there. You need to tilt the camera up, try to
> place it’s rotation point at the 20th floor (possibly moving the
> camera backward and hoping nothing blocks your view), then tilt the
> camera down (which translates the camera up) to get back to
> horizontal.
>
> Although I spend a fair amount of time doing GIS work, my perspective
> comes from spending the last 10 years working with lidar and similar
> data in 3D modeling and metrology applications, where the primary mode
> of interaction is a 3D viewport. As a result, I have several specific
> thoughts on changes to the 3D View’s UI that would make it easier to
> use, better able to eventually support more interactive tools and more
> consistent with the rest of the QGIS UI. This email is already long
> enough though so rather than get into that now, I’d first rather ask
> what others think of the current 3D view.
>
> How much do people currently use the 3D view? Is the current UI
> working well for how it is being used? What about down the road? Is
> there a desire for more 3D tools and if so are there limitations of
> the current design that should be reconsidered?
>
> Thanks for reading,
>
> --
> Jed Frechette
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