so ive been doing mapping work for about two years now mostly construction progress stuff but recently picked up a contract for a couple of large farms and the client wants NDVI outputs and plant health reports, the whole deal. been using DroneDeploy for most of my construction work because honestly its just easier to get clients to look at the outputs in the browser without installing anything.

but ive heard from a few people that Pix4Dfields is actually built for this kind of work and the outputs are more reliable for ag use cases. the problem is the pricing difference is pretty significant and if the farm contract doesnt continue past this season i dont want to be locked into something expensive.

anyone here done serious ag mapping with both? is the NDVI output quality actually noticeably different or is this one of those things where both are fine and its mostly workflow preference. im flying a Mavic 3 Multispectral so i have the proper sensor at least

yeah i went through this exact decision about 18 months ago. ended up sticking with DroneDeploy for ag work because my clients are not technical at all and the shareable link thing saves me so much time explaining stuff. the NDVI maps honestly look fine for the farmers i work with ? they can see the stressed areas, they can compare fields, thats pretty much what they need.

that said i have a buddy who does more precision ag stuff with variable rate prescriptions and he swears by Pix4Dfields because the chlorophyll index outputs and the way it handles the reflectance calibration panel workflow is just cleaner. if youre doing actual prescription maps for seeding or fertilizer application i think it matters more. if youre just doing scouting and health overviews DD is probably fine.

the mavic 3 multispectral should work well with either but make sure your DLS2 calibration is set up right before you commit to a bunch of flights, i had some weird banding issues early on that turned out to be a sun irradiance sensor mounting problem and not a software thing at all. took me like three flights worth of data to figure that out