CaveViewer Science tool
**CaveViewer ? free desktop tool for viewing large cave survey scans (Windows, v1.0)**
Built this with Zsolt Zsabo (BottomLine Projects Scientific Dive Team) because we wanted an easy way to actually fly through our survey scans instead of just having them sit as files. Figured I'd share it here in case it's useful to anyone else.
**What it does:**
CaveViewer loads 3D cave scans (the kind you get out of photogrammetry/survey software) and lets you fly through them with a free camera, like you're actually swimming the passage. It's built specifically to handle scans that are too big to open in normal 3D viewers ? it streams the model in chunks around your current position instead of loading the whole thing into memory at once, so multi-gigabyte scans stay smooth.
**Formats supported:**
- `.OBJ` (+ `.MTL` + tiled `.JPG` textures) ? this is what Agisoft Metashape and similar photogrammetry tools export
- `.GLB` (binary glTF), including ones with textures embedded directly in the file
**Controls / features:**
- Free-fly camera (WASD + mouse look, vertical movement, speed boost)
- Adjustable headlamp brightness, separate from a global ambient "fill light" if you want to see the whole space at once instead of just your beam
- Minimap with click-to-teleport ? jumps you into the actual passage, not floating in empty rock
- Wireframe / texture toggles, useful for inspecting scan density and mesh quality, not just looking at the pretty version
- Adjustable render distance (how far the chunk-streaming reaches around you) with a live FPS/chunk readout so you can tune it for your machine
- Switch between maps without closing the program
- Background color picker for the void around the model
- Built-in updater ? checks GitHub for new versions and installs them with one click
**Cost / privacy:**
Free, no ads, no account, no telemetry. Runs fully offline once installed ? no internet needed except to check for updates, and that's optional.
**Platform:**
Windows only right now. (No Mac build yet ? open to it eventually, but I don't have a Mac to test on, so I'm not shipping something I can't verify actually works.)
**Install:**
One-click installer handles Python and all dependencies for you ? no setup experience needed.
1. Download the latest release: https://github.com/KernalPanic/CaveV...eleases/latest
2. Extract the zip
3. Run `Launch_Setup.bat` in the `setup` folder, click Install
4. Launch CaveViewer from the new desktop shortcut, click Browse, point it at the folder with your `.obj`+`.mtl` or `.glb` file
First time opening a given map, it does a one-time import/chunking pass (shows a progress bar). Every open after that is instant.
**Source / more info:**
https://github.com/KernalPanic/CaveViewer
Happy to answer questions, and if anyone runs into issues I'd genuinely like to hear about them ? this is still early (v1.0) and built around our own survey workflow, so if your setup or use case breaks something, let me know and I'll take a look.
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