Flyability Adds Colourisation to Elios 3 Point Clouds!
Flyability have announced that Colorisation is coming to point clouds captured with the Elios 3. This brand-new feature will be available through Flyability Cloud from December, 2025. Colourisation transforms Elios point clouds and videos into detailed, life-like textured meshes, viewable in Flyability Cloud, or in Inspector 5.
With Colorisation, you will be able to instantly visualise what can’t be seen on a pure point cloud alone, gaining richer insights and a more realistic understanding of the inside of an inspection environment.
This feature will be available starting December 2nd, 2025. It will be included in all Cloud subscriptions with unlimited use, and free users will receive 10 credits to try it out.
If you haven't used Flyability Cloud before you can sign up here: https://cloud.flyability.com
Why Colorisation?
Many people who receive Elios 3 data — managers, contractors, engineering partners — are not used to navigating point clouds.
By generating a textured mesh or a colorised point cloud, we add visual information that instantly grounds the model in reality. Walls look like walls. Stains look like stains. Markings appear where you expect them. Interpretation becomes faster and more accessible — even for people seeing the data for the first time.
This clarity reduces misinterpretation, avoids back-and-forth questions, and helps teams make decisions faster.
“The colorisation feature makes the point cloud much easier to view than a normal point cloud — especially for clients that are not used to point clouds.”
Daniel Jatko from LKAB Mining
Watch the transition from point cloud to mesh to textured mesh with colorization
Making Measurements Faster and More Precise
While the colorisation algorithm isn’t as precise as photogrammetry, it dramatically improves the practicality of taking measurements in 3D. With textures applied to the mesh, users can visually locate the exact features they want to measure.
“We use the mesh for the condition assessment of the channels. It lets us measure exact lengths and dimensions directly in the mesh — something we previously had to determine by matching video with the model. That method used to be quite tedious.”
Ronny Boese, Managing Director at Cansol
Where once you would have to manually compare video timestamps, its's now a quick visual check inside the 3D model.
Measuring in a 3D model becomes much simpler
Critical Details not Visible with just LiDAR now Become Visible
Sometimes, the most important visual cues — wall markings, targets, stains, corrosion — don’t reflect LiDAR and therefore don’t appear in the point cloud. But they do appear in the textured mesh.
This makes colorization especially valuable for:
- Georeferencing underground models
- Tracking deformation or rockfall damage
- Identifying structural details
- Locating objects of interest more quickly
Customers increasingly expect colorised 3D models, especially as photogrammetry has made textured outputs common in outdoor environments. With the Colorisation feature running on Flyability Cloud, sharing a colorised dataset becomes as simple as sending a link — giving stakeholders an immediate “I get it” moment.
Colorisation offers better clarity for details the point cloud might not capture, especially for things like control targets
What Colorisation is (and isn’t)
Flyability have built colorisation specifically for fast, reliable, indoor 3D workflows. This is not photogrammetry, and that’s by design.
☑️What Colourisation does
- Adds realistic texture and color to indoor 3D models
- Makes point clouds easier to interpret for everyone
- Enables faster, more precise measurements
- Improves communication with stakeholders
- Helps identify markings and structures that LiDAR alone misses
- Supports remote inspections and collaboration
❌What Colourisation doesn't do
- Replace photogrammetry for millimeter-level accuracy
- Reconstruct very small objects (<10 cm)
- Guarantee uniform texturing in occluded areas
Colorisation is a visualisation enhancement, not a metrology tool — but for inspection and asset documentation, it will deliver enormous value to your confined space inspections!
How it works
The workflow is simple:
- Capture your Elios 3 video and LiDAR as usual
- Upload the dataset to Flyability Cloud
- Process it in Flyability Cloud to generate a textured mesh and colorized point cloud
- View, share, or download the outputs in Flyability Cloud or Inspector 5.
No special training. No photogrammetry workflows. No tinkering with overlap or camera angles — just fly slowly and keep surfaces in view.
Try it!
Colorization dramatically elevates the impact of your Elios 3 data:
- Faster interpretation
- Better communication
- More useful insights
- More convincing deliverables
And ultimately, more value is extracted from every mission. If you rely on Elios 3 for inspections, this feature will very likely become a standard part of your workflow.
If you haven't do so before, you can sign up to Flyability Cloud here — its free!*
*For existing Elios users, you should be able to sign into Flyability Cloud with the same account you use for Inspector 5.
Please feel free to reach out if you like more information, or to see a demo of colourisation in action.