Pointcloud conversion slows down simulation

edit

After spawning a model in rviz, ROS Time (indicator on the bottom left) runs smoothly until I run a pointCloud conversion node. Then, ROS Time seems to update based on the update_rate gazebo tag of the sensor that returns the PointCloud I'm trying to convert to PointCloud2. This is the code I'm using for the conversion node:

#include <ros/ros.h>
#include <sensor_msgs/PointCloud.h>
#include <sensor_msgs/PointCloud2.h>
#include <sensor_msgs/point_cloud_conversion.h>
#include <ros/publisher.h>

ros::Publisher pointcloud2Publisher;

void p2p2Converter(const sensor_msgs::PointCloud& msg) {
    sensor_msgs::PointCloud2 pointcloud2;
    if (sensor_msgs::convertPointCloudToPointCloud2(msg,pointcloud2))
        pointcloud2Publisher.publish(pointcloud2);
    else
        ROS_INFO("Failed to publish PointCloud2");

}

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    ros::init(argc, argv, "p2p2_node");
    ros::NodeHandle n;
    pointcloud2Publisher = n.advertise<sensor_msgs::PointCloud2>("/lidar/pointcloud2", 1);
    ros::Subscriber pointcloudListener = n.subscribe("/lidar/pointcloud", 1, p2p2Converter);
    ros::spin();
    return 0;
}

Here's my CMakeLists.txt:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8.3)
project(turtle_gazebo)

find_package(catkin REQUIRED COMPONENTS
        roscpp
        sensor_msgs
)

catkin_package(
)

include_directories(
    ${catkin_INCLUDE_DIRS}
)

add_executable(p2p2_node src/p2p2.cpp)

target_link_libraries(p2p2_node
    ${catkin_LIBRARIES}
)

EDIT: I cloned the following point_cloud_converter pkg but the issue remains.