I abandon the idea PIx 4 d will ever develop a desktop planning tool and go towards another application .
thanks
@Xavier we are really sorry to hear that 
I hope you can change your mind in the future.
Alice
Alice this is a major failure issue with the Pix4Dcapture app not including a desktop option to create flight plans, and there have been many posts relating to this very issue from many people going back since 2016, and which seems Pix4D simply chooses to keep ignoring!! If you expect people to “change their minds” please develop this app to work in line with what your customers needs are.
The Pix4Dcapture app is failing in many areas for being a usable professional operations tool we need from it to perform for us… Our operations are doing quarry and mining surveys as well as mining exploration surveys, quite often in very remote areas and we simply can’t use it as is, and we are using Litchi instead.
Here is my list of issues.
Many of our survey are in remote location, and here in the tropics SE Asia, it is extremely hot. We do not want to be standing around in the swelting tropical heat, fiddling around on a mobile phone or table figuring out the flight plans and wasting time while making fiddley adjustment on a small device.
Often we do not fully understand the challenges of the area or terrain we need to survey until we arrive on site, so often we need to do many adjustment to the flight plans which we can do on our laptops. Some of this is related to maps in many of these areas are out dated or maybe covered in cloud. We also find many maps use low resolution satellite images if it’s not in an urban area. The setup locations might look ok on the maps, but often are very different when we arrive on site, so we have to move elsewhere, meaning many adjustments to the flight plans.
Our work flow now is we create all our flight plans on our desk top PC’s in the comfort of our office (Using Litchi). We often have 10-15 flight plans per project and takes quite a few hours to get them setup. So try imaging fiddling around on a mobile device trying to setup and integrating these flight plans to best suit our operation, all on a small mobile device is just ridiculous for a professional operations. Whereas doing this on a 32 inch desktop PC is by far so much easier and functional. The Pix4capture app is no more than a hobby style recreational function type app in our opinion.
Although the function in Pix4D app to have multiple flight plans for one site is reasonably good where it breaks it up into a number of flights and calculating the batteries needed is a good start. However it doesn’t go far enough for optimising the battery usage and there is limited flexibility to modify the start and end of each flight location.
To optimise battery usage we have all our flight plans using both the out bound leg and in bound leg to the start and end of the flight plan areas are also part of the image capture data set. ( See photo examples) Whereas Pix4Dcapture app wastes battery flight time by flying from take-off point all the way out to the start and then back from the end point to the landing point not capturing images. This is because it also flies across areas already captured with other of the flight segments. There is no way to set the end point and start point manually to be at the same take off location.
We need to be able to use the flights going out and back from the start and end points also capturing images, and avoid wasting batteries flying over already captured areas doing nothing other than going to the start and end of the next flight segment. For a 10 to 15 area flight job, this saves us a lot of time and much less batteries used when we can include the out bound and inward bound legs capturing images.
No option for importing KML/KMZ files is another issue for us who use iSO iPads and iPad mini’s. This was discussed in your forums since 2016!
Last time I tested it about 8 months ago, the options for manually adjusting the camera settings was still very limited. Some areas we fly have very bright areas and some very dark. We need to keep the ISO and shutter speed fixed, and be able to adjust the f stop manually during the flights.
Adjusting flight path widths where when flying over higher terrain areas we need them closer together and over flat terrain areas they can be more spread apart would be useful.
In summary, Pix4Dmapper is still the best option we see in the market place for what we do. But even so still needs lots of improvements. It’s really being let down a lot by not having a better integrated field capture app, and one that is able to be used on a desk top PC as well. (It is really a half backed product overall)
We have being paying annal support subscriptions which I won’t redo this time, because it seems to be getting less and less improvements to our perpetual license software, and mostly updates a minor or just bug fixes, and as Pix4D is more focused on branching out other Pix4D derivatives the support for the core products that need more improvements seems its being neglected.
Please take more note of the customer issues in your community forums and please take more action on those issues
Thanks,
Rgds John.
Aha asked same questions and request back in 2015 , 5 years later same issue …… hopeless
Xavier Bouan
Senior Technical Advisor
Sustainable cropland and forest management in priority agro-ecosytems of Myanmar
Global Environment Facility (GEF)
Forest Department –MONREC
Naypitaw – Myanmar
Mob +95 9894097710
Hello Everyone,
Sorry to hear about that. However, there are still no plans to implement flight plans on the desktop in 2020. If things change, we will post here to inform the community.
For now, I would suggest you to use the other image acquisition app that is more suitable for your application. Just for your information, you can use any image acquisition app and still process the data using the Pix4Dmapper software.
Regards,
Hi,
To everyone who is looking for the desktop version. You may want to try bluestacks program on your windows, which allows you to run android base application within the program. The controls are little awkward, but once got used to it works pretty good. computer monitor beats by far the small tablet screen. You can export created flight plan files to windows, and than load into your mobile device, for the use in the field. I don’t think Pix4d will ever write the full desktop version.
Hello Everyone,
There are still no plans to implement flight plans on the desktop in 2020. If things change, we will post here to inform the community.
Regards,
Hi All,
We are mapping large areas (15000 Hacters) using DJI Phantom4 pro. For that we have to create multiple projects with multiple missiosn in Pix4D Capture application. As you know it is vry difficult to create multiple projects in Smart phone or Tablet. I would like to know if there is a way to create multi mission projects in PC and and import that in Pix4D Capture application.
Thanks in Advance