okay so this has been driving me insane for the past two weeks. im using DroneDeploy with my M3E and the center of the map always looks great but then around the edges and especially corners the whole thing just kind of... warps or stretches. buildings look like they're leaning inward and the geometry is just off. i've flown the same area three times now with different overlap settings and it keeps happening.

first time i was at like 70/65 front/side overlap, bumped it to 80/75 the second time and still the same issue. third flight i added a crosshatch pattern over the most problematic corners and it helped a little but not enough that i'd call it solved. no GCPs placed because the client didn't think they needed survey-grade accuracy but now im wondering if that's the whole problem.

the area is mostly flat residential, nothing crazy going on with terrain. wind was calm all three times. kinda lost on what to try next

that doming/bowling effect on the edges is super common when you dont have GCPs and you're relying purely on the RTK or barometric altitude for elevation. even with RTK there can be systematic errors that the software kind of... bakes in across the whole model and it shows up worst at the perimeter where the photogrammetry has less to hold onto. adding even 4-5 well-distributed GCPs around the site perimeter usually kills this problem dead. the crosshatch pass helps with tie point density but it wont fix the underlying georeferencing drift

yeah been there. also check if your camera calibration profile in DD is actually set right for the M3E - i had a period where it was defaulting to a generic wide angle profile instead of the actual lens and the edge distortion was pretty gnarly. might not be your issue but worth poking around in the processing settings before you plant a bunch of GCPs