Cannot reduce the point size with meshlab 2020 after some degree

[CanCanZeng]

I find that with a rather big point cloud, the point size cannot be reduced to as small as in meshlab 2016. The two picture below show this situation, the former one is in meshlab2016 and the latter is in meshlab2020.

I use Alt+Scroll to change the point size, but in meshlab2020 I cannot make it view looks better.

More weird is that when I reduce the point size to the smallest as I can, if I use Shift+Scroll to change the FOV, the point size will change too, and when the FOV approach Ortho (6.2 degree), the point size will looks much like on meshlab2016, but still not small enough.

I have tested on ubuntu16.04 and ubuntu20.04, and tested with meshlab 2020.03, 2020.06 and 2020.12

you can use my ply file for test. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qW3mVPlMeDMMIQBqY2gcrGpF0O1aUDDr/view?usp=sharing

[alemuntoni]

I am not experiencing on small point clouds (I don't have big ones right now. I requested access to the file you shared since it is restricted). Does this happen only with big point clouds?

[CanCanZeng]

Acutally I segment a small part of this big point cloud, the effect I mentioned above still exists, but not very obviously.

I upload my file to dropbox, hope it will help. https://www.dropbox.com/s/pwo0k5s56gyj4hd/ba.ply?dl=0

[CanCanZeng]

Hi @alemuntoni , is this bug fixed? I tried the newest release 2022.2, AppImage format, it still has the same issue.

[denniskb]

Bump. I work with large point clouds (~100M). The minimum point size (2) is still way to big for me. Would be nice if the slider went all the way down to 1.

[tkircher]

I have this same problem. It used to be possible to visualize point clouds as actual clouds of points, now they are huge squares that differ depending on scale and it isn't possible to fix that through the user interface. I work with pretty small point clouds (20M to 50M points) and I've just been using cloudcompare. I really do like meshlab and wish they would fix this.

[CanCanZeng]

I found a temporary solution, which is to modify a piece of code and locally compile and install meshlab. change the min return value to 1e-5 here https://github.com/cnr-isti-vclab/meshlab/blob/ca1f5ab1d4ac2c3f687fb48197dc31f23583ef33/src/common/ml_shared_data_context/ml_shared_data_context.h#L206 In this case, you can use the mouse scroll wheel to control the size of the point cloud to a very small extent, but using the slider does not work. @denniskb @tkircher @alemuntoni