Terrain Following

PIX4Dcapture PIX4Dcapture Questions/Troubleshooting
1

Are there plans to implement terrain following in Pix4DCapture. I fly mapping missions in mountainous terrain and need this functionality.

2 Likes
2

Hi Curtis,

Terrain following to maintain the distance constant between the drone and the ground could be implemented. However, it is a not feature in our pipeline at the moment. I have shared the idea with our Product Team that will review and consider it for future development.

Thank you for the feedback.

Regards,

3

Hi there,

Given that you suggest that terrain following is the best practice for image acquisition (https://support.pix4d.com/hc/en-us/articles/204656209-Image-Acquisition-Plan-for-Terrain-with-Height-Variations#gsc.tab=0) it would be a major deciding factor for us if it were implimented in Capture. We currently use Pixhawk and Mission Planner and have found this feature to be so valuable that we are very hesitant to move to another platform but given advancements in DJI and now Parrot we are very tempted to move. This would enable us to run Solo, P4P, and DiscoAg on a common platform and send results directly to Cloud…ultimate setup. The world is not flat and for us this is especially true (Hawaii). Any thoughts on implementing SRTM data like Mission Planner or MapPilot?

1 Like
4

I was confused that the terrain following as per the link above was described, and spent some time trying to see how to do that in the pix4dcapture app!

 

Its seems impossible to use pix4dcapture to map a terrain that has 800 m elevation variation.

 

 

5

@JASON, indeed the single flight following the terrain elevation variation is the recommended option. The idea is to get a constant GSD in the dataset. At the moment this option is not implemented in our app and we have forwarded it, together with the implementation of SRTM data, to our Product Team. 

@Reuben, the following workaround is suggested: If there are a lot of height differences in the area you are mapping we advise you to perform multiple flights. That will allow you to mimic the changes in the terrain.

Best,

6

Please add my vote for terrain following via SRTM at least. Almost every site I fly needs to keep a constant height above terrain to maintain GSD and overlap. I really like P4D Capture but have to use Map Pilot or TapMap to get this right…

7

Hello @hwls

There are no plans to implement the above-requested feature in 2020. If things change, we will post here to inform the community.

Thank you