Flight basics
You don't need special hardware or heroic piloting to capture a good mapping dataset — you need consistency. Photogrammetry reconstructs the scene by matching the same ground features across many photos, so the flight's job is simple: cover the whole area with plenty of shared content between neighbouring images, taken under similar conditions.
Most mapping apps can fly an automated grid for you, which is the easiest way to get these properties right. Whether you fly automated or manual, these recommendations give the processing engine the best possible material to work with:
- Shoot nadir (camera pointing straight down) for standard mapping flights. It keeps the geometry simple and the ground sampling consistent.
- Keep generous overlap — around 75% front overlap and 65% side overlap is a good starting point. More overlap costs more images, but too little leaves gaps the reconstruction cannot bridge.
- Hold a consistent altitude across the whole flight, so every photo has a similar ground resolution.
- Avoid motion blur: fly at a moderate speed, and prefer good light so the camera can use a fast shutter. Blurry images are the most common cause of weak results.
- Fly in stable conditions where you can — even, diffuse light and low wind produce more consistent images than harsh shadows or gusts.
- Extend the flight slightly past the area you care about, so the edges of your site are covered from multiple angles too.
None of these are hard requirements — MapperTool will process what you give it, and the automatic quality check will tell you how your set measures up before processing starts. Treat them as the difference between an acceptable result and a great one.
This guide is being written. The essentials above are accurate today; the detailed walkthrough lands here soon.