so ive been doing some contract work for a few farms in my area and the clients are starting to ask for more detailed analysis, like NDVI stuff and volume calculations for stockpiles at one of the properties. right now im just using DroneDeploy on the standard plan and it's been fine for basic orthomosaic output but im starting to hit walls with it.

the thing that's bugging me is Pix4D is like significantly more expensive especially if you go for the full suite with Pix4Dfields and Pix4Dmapper, and i honestly don't know if the output quality is meaningfully better for agricultural use cases or if im just gonna be paying more for a fancier interface. anybody actually switched between the two and noticed a real difference in the point cloud quality or the NDVI accuracy? or is this more of a workflow preference thing

flying a Mavic 3 Multispectral btw if that matters

honestly the quality difference between the two for ag work is real but maybe not in the way you'd expect. Pix4Dfields processes faster for multispectral data and the index outputs are cleaner in my experience, but DroneDeploy has caught up a lot in the last year or so. i ran both on the same dataset once just to compare and the orthomosaics were pretty much identical at normal resolutions. where Pix4D actually pulls ahead is when you're doing tighter GCP workflows and need more control over the processing parameters ? DD kind of hides a lot of that stuff from you which is fine until it isn't.

for what your clients are asking for though, if they just want NDVI maps and maybe some basic zone management output, DD might honestly be enough and you save yourself a chunk of money every month. if they start wanting deliverables that go into other GIS software or want raw point clouds then yeah pix4d makes more sense

wait the Mavic 3 Multispectral works with DroneDeploy natively? i thought there were still some integration issues with the newer DJI enterprise stuff. or did they fix that