Why Voxelize Data?

There are two different reasons to voxelize a dataset. First, it reduces the size of the dataset, up to 75%—essential if you’re going to be doing a large amount of work on your data in real time. This size reduction can create an outsized response in performance, given the computational complexity of some of the algorithms involved. Instead of simply destroying data, as if you decimated it, voxelization creates a smoothly moving average over the space, something that maintains as much data as possible while simultaneously lowering the state space size. For example, given a scene that’s 3 meters by 3 meters by 3 meters and has 500,000 points evenly distributed, you can realize over a 50% reduction in points (216,000 vs. 500,000) with a 5-ce....