Hi Josh,

> To do this in rviz, ogre_tools::PointCloud would need to be updated to
> support the extra information, and the point cloud transformers would
> need to get updated to support normals.  My (discontinued, though
> someone else may pick it up) work on rve
> (http://www.ros.org/wiki/visualization_engine) includes support for
> per-point color/normal/scale, so that may be a good starting point if
> you're looking for rendering code.  Specifically,
> rve_render_server/src/batching/points*.

Thank you for these links, I've had a look and indeed it will certainly 
prove useful. Was rve a rewrite of rviz?

Have a nice day,

Stéphane

-- 
Dr Stéphane Magnenat
http://stephane.magnenat.net