so ive been doing mapping work for about two years now mostly real estate and construction progress shots but i just picked up a contract with a local farm co-op and they want regular orthomosaics and NDVI stuff for like 800 acres split across a few different fields

ive been using DroneDeploy for a while and its fine, the automated flight planning is nice and i can turn around deliverables pretty fast but a buddy of mine whos been doing ag work longer keeps telling me pix4d is just better for this kind of thing especially the multispectral processing. hes not wrong that DD sometimes does weird things with color calibration on my Micasense RedEdge shots

thing is pix4dfields is like way cheaper than pix4dmapper but im not sure if fields has enough of the tools i need for the construction side too or if id basically need both subscriptions running. anyone actually using both platforms or switched from one to the other for mixed use work

yeah the fields vs mapper question is a real one. fields is basically stripped down for crop health stuff, youre not getting the full point cloud tools or the solid mesh outputs that you'd want for a cut and fill calculation on a construction site. if you're doing both types of work you'd honestly probably end up frustrated with fields pretty quick

I ran DroneDeploy for about 18 months before switching to pix4dmapper and the difference in how it handles the tie point matching in dense vegetation is noticeable. DD would sometimes just fall apart on areas with uniform crop rows and id get these weird warping artifacts along the edges. pix4d isnt perfect either but i have way more control over the processing parameters when something goes sideways

that said dd's interface for clients is way better if you need to share deliverables with people who arent technical. the link sharing and annotation tools are genuinely good

not sure about the ag side specifically but i tried the pix4d free trial a few months ago and honestly found the learning curve kind of steep compared to what i was used to. maybe thats just me though, im coming from mostly recreational mapping so the whole calibration workflow felt like a lot

one thing i did notice is that the GCP interface in pix4d felt more solid when i was placing ground control points, drag and drop and zoom behavior just felt more precise. small thing but when youre clicking through 30+ GCPs it adds up