[QGIS-Developer] QGIS 3D: looking below the terrain model

[Vincent Habchi]

Hi there,

I’m boarding a bit late on the train but:

> Perhaps - or maybe not. 3D is the kind of thing that many think is cool, but they wouldn't spend money on it, because it isn't helping their business case. As an example, the crowd funding from Lutra on 3D for Crayfish go close to zero support from QGIS users up to now. See https://www.lutraconsulting.co.uk/crowdfunding/qgis-crayfish-3/ 

My experience as a journalist who speaks to quite a lot of people using GIS in local governments and elsewhere is that 3D is rarely, if ever used, and for the time being is more a gadget than a real useful tool.

However, that is probably going to change in the near future as a result of three separate trends:

1. LiDAR point clouds (I’d say that integrating point clouds viz into QGis is as important as being able to represent 3D volumes). 

2. BIM - SIG convergence.

3. Utility network management (which raises the point of underground representation). 


Besides, is QGIS 3D powered by the 3D functions of Qt? Because I heard about the Globe plugin being underpinned by Open Scene Graph, and I’d hate, as a packager, to see the number of dependencies barrel out of control just because the 3D support hasn’t be harmonised to a single API.

Vincent