Desktop maping software

blackhawkp · Sep 3, 2016

Hello everyone, im super excited because today i will enjoy my first flight with my P4. One of the things i wanted to do with with my P4 is map out my deer lease. Although i see plenty of online recommendations where you upload your photos then the online resource renders a map or 3d model i am looking for something that can be done localy on my computer. The reason for this is simple but mostly revolves around privacy if the area i will be photo graphing and i wantthe ability to save high quality PDFs which will be used for map printing and creation.

Any in would be appreciated.

AlexSP · Sep 3, 2016

Hi there mate, welcome to the world of mapping and modeling, its truly addictive and exciting. I do a lot of mapping, surveying and 3D modeling and lately I'm very excited with Drone Deploy. There are others such as Pix4D, they're tops but at a point you have to pick one of the big guys and keep developing as they go. Both have great support in my experience but I'm really enjoying DD, they're serious and have a very intuitive yet advanced (and well integrated) capturing app and rendering/exporting features. But Pix4D is super pro and complete too, you can try both to see which suits your needs and workflow best. Of course there are others as well.

I'd recommend you go for cloud instead of desktop though, it's a lot faster and precise and still quite safe. It's a lot more powerful and you can configure your access and export modes to keep it all as private as you wish/need. It seems quite alright for me on that front, all of them in fact. It's just that sometimes you have to do, re-do and re-re-do everything to get the results you need and this level of power and support come handy to save time and save frustration

And you don't have to pay for the SW or install it on your computer, you can lease for a fixed period which can be an advantage too. Another tip would pick the basic, free version which offers rendering until you can learn a bit and decide which way to go.

Hope that helps, best of luck!