The "Elaphes cave" dataset

This site offers for download, with a broadly open license (refer below) a lidar point cloud dataset of the "Elaphes cave". The original data set has 94 465 067 RGB 3D points, wheights 781Mo in its LASzip file format form and 2.3Go in its LAS file format form.

Cloud Compare rendering
Crude rendering realized with CloudCompare point cloud processing software

The original 3D lasergrammetric data (refer below to the Exp-Cloud-ELAPHS-94M.laz file), offered for download in this site, was acquired during an EDYTEM / USMB / CNRS joint project and, as such, is copyrighted by EDYTEM / USMB / CNRS. Contact: Stephane Jaillet.

All data contained within this directory are released under the ETALAB v2.0 open license (refer to file ETALAB-Licence-Ouverte-v2.0_EN.pdf within this directory).

The archeological site of the cave

A reference concerning the "Creux des Elaphes" site is the article Philippe M., Chaix L., Guibot S., Hobléa F., Jeannet M., Valli A. 2001 : Le Creux des Élaphes (Commune des Déserts, Plateau du Revard, Savoie) et sa faune de vertébrés holocènes, Cahiers scientifiques du Muséum d’histoire naturelle de Lyon, 2, p. 19-105.

The abstract of the first section of this article (The site, its discovery and realized searches, pp. 21-29), mentions

The creux des Elaphes is a small natural cave in the Bauges Massif (Savoie, France). When it was discovered, in May 1994, the inventor was surprised by the presence of numerous bones [...] especially a skull and some important elements of the skeleton of a red deer (Cervus elaphus), hence the name of this cave.

Original lasergrammetric point cloud data

The original lasergrammetric (LIDAR Aerial Survey) point cloud data holds 94 465 067 RGB 3D points. It is available under different formats

Sanitized point cloud (derived data)

The sanitized point cloud (refer below for what "sanitizing" refers to) data holds 94 465 064 RGB 3D points

Technical notes

Why sanitize and what was sanitized?

The original 3D lasergrammetric data Exp-Cloud-ELAPHS-94M.laz file has some aquisition artefacts: a small set of isolated points stading aside from the cave geometry. This glitch can be seen e.g. with CloudCompare as depicted in the following views.

Cloud Compare rendering Cloud Compare rendering
Z axis is up, X points to the right of the screen and Y is perpendicular to the screen Z axis is up, Y points to the right of the screen and X is perpendicular to the screen

Cloud Compare rendering
Y axis is up, X points to the right of the screen and Z is perpendicular to the screen

Altough this glitch doesn't prevent working on the point cloud (starting with displaying them), the bounding box is quite offseted from the barycenter of the point cloud which can perturb the manipulation of the point cloud (rotations) or even the display within some applications.

Sanitizations thus just consists in removing those three offseted points.

3DTiles refering to a CRS

3dTiles format does not allow to specify a CRS (Coordinate Reference System). Different geographical placements (or positionnings) are thus offered depending on the main "tileset.json" entrypoint that you consider. In other terms the only difference between the following different entrypoints

resides in their `transform` entries each of which refers to the associated and documented CRS. Note: you can refer to this documentation on how to produce your geographical context positionnal configuration of the cave.