We have recently been conducting a 3D laser scan survey of the Gomantong Caves, Sabah, Borneo. Although the primary goal is to extract geomorphological data, the scans have been used to build a "fly-through" video - based on discussions at the recent 16th International Congress of speleology. we believe the result to be "state-of-the-art".  The video, in various resolutions/file sizes, can be downloaded from: http://faculty.jsd.claremont.edu/dmcfarlane/Borneo/
The equipment used was a FARO Focus3D scanner, with 60MB photo-overlays in areas with visible daylight (these appear in colour in the video).

DM

Colour me impressed! 

Superb. A sign of things to come, i'm sure... 

Fantastic 

Don

I am seriously impressed

JJ

Very impressive indeed.

Can you tell me did the faro scanner come with software to produce this output or was there multiple layers of exporting to different file formats etc etc. ?

Faro provides some free software for processing the x-y-z scan data (SceneLT), which we are using to extract datasets for geomorphology work. However, putting everything into a video requires 3rd party software.  The procedure (which was done by a masters student, Stefan Hautz) is....
1) the TLS cave data and the DTM surface data (from an autonomous drone) were taken into CINEMA4D as two separate files.  (2) The two video files were cut together using PINACLE STUDIO, and (3) the sound was added in using VIRTUAL DUB.

Don.

:bow:

Impressive indeed - both the cave and the presentation.

VERY impressive! I often wondered if you could use 3D environmental game development software to reproduce free walking cave 'simulations'? I think you could do this with mines where passages are of similar size etc.. but perhaps caves would be too complex..