Gonçalo,

On 12/06/2010 10:18 AM, Ivan Dryanovski wrote:
> 2010/12/6 Gonçalo Cabrita<goncabrita@gmail.com>:
>> Hi everyone!
>> I'm starting a project in which I am going to use a Point Cloud
>> representation of data (not vision related).
>> So my question is, should I use PointCloud2 instead of PointCloud? Is
>> PointCloud sort of deprecated, or is it just a matter of choice depending on
>> the requirements of my project?
[...]
> According to the PCL FAQ, publishing PointCloud2 is recommended over PointCloud:
>
> http://www.ros.org/wiki/pcl/FAQ#Is_there_any_reason_to_continue_using_PointCloud_messages.2BAC8-topics.3F

As Ivan said, we are strongly discouraging the use of sensor_msgs/PointCloud for any important application where you 
care about efficiency. PCL (http://pointclouds.org :) ) is only supporting the new sensor_msgs/PointCloud2 format natively.

Starting with the upcoming PCL 0.7 we're hoping to create drivers that will publish pcl::PointCloud<T> directly too - 
exciting times for those avid nodelet performance freaks! :)

Cheers,
Radu.
--
http://pointclouds.org