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Friday, March 24th, 2023
Been using Pix4d and Agisoft Metashape Professional, but Carlson is offering a limited time sale on their products that is very tempting. Would like to hear opinions re the Carlson products. I'm thinking Carlson Point Cloud Advanced might be a suitable substitute for Virtual Surveyor for feature extraction. (Presumably, Photo Capture Standalone produces products similar to Pix4d and Agisoft Metashape Professional.)
Regular pricing for Point Cloud Advanced, and for Photo Capture Standalone, is about $5,000 each, but for a few more days they can be purchased together for $4,995 total. I don't really need another photogrammetry software in addition to Pix4d and Agisoft, but their sale is structured to include both products.
I would prefer to be able to get just the Point Cloud Advanced for %50 per cent off, but no such offer is available; just the combined package for $4,995.
I have "rented" Virtual Surveyor, but my preference is to own what I use. That makes the Point Could Advanced offer look appealing, considering it will do what Virtual Surveyor does.
Also, anyone already using Carlson CAD packages (I do) should benefit from better integration.
I have a seat of Advanced and I have been using Carlson Point Cloud since 2014. I looked at the Basic and I am unsure if I need all the tools in Advanced but I am not downgrading now.
The point cloud extraction software works from your Field to Finish codes. It integrates well into a current survey outfit. Carlson has been very responsive. Their PC software has changed considerably since 2014 and I have had great responses from the company on all questions and requests. I also have Quick Terrain Modeler and Global Mapper.
I am a huge Carlson fan but I still process the drone imagery through Pix4d. I bought a seat of Mapper and am happy with that product.
but I still process the drone imagery through Pix4d. I
Have you tried their cloud processing (you can get a trial)? I would be very interested to know how it compares with Pix4d. My experience was that it is comparable, but I am not enough of an expert to really get deep into the weeds on them.
I also looked at the Carlson Photo Capture software, and I recently did the same project using both photo capture and pix4d. Pix4d was the hands down winner. The final orthoimage from PhotoCapture had gaps, the building lines were not clean at all compared to Pix4d....so, needless to say that kind of convinced me Pix4d is the best one that I have tried. Another thing - I emailed Carlson about the issues and they acknowledged some gap issues when there is high vegetation. They also said in order to get the building lines better that I needed to fly with my camera at an oblique instead nadir, which I have never had to do.
@dmyhill one of the bigger differences between Mapper and Cloud or even Matic is the latter can use a geod and Mapper can not. I still believe it doesn't matter- process it all in WGS84 with ellipsoid hts and then have the output convert to NAD whatever you want on the back end.
