Latest Contributions by CodyBenkelman

Short answer, Yes.  We don't have an expected availability date yet, but this is under development. ... View more

We have been considering creation of an Android version, but note that this app is responsible for controlling and ensuring the safe flight of commercial drones, and this requires extensive development and testing.  Extending this functionality to Android devices would be a major development effort, and we have not yet made a commitment to proceed.  Can you let us know your reasons for this request?  Is the primary concern related to the cost of the tablet?  Are there security concerns?  Do you need a ruggedized mobile device?  Are there limitations imposed by your IT department?   (Note that we certainly appreciate the challenge of expanding system administration efforts, if limited to Android, to include iOS devices for general purpose office communications - but most organizations using drones as operational equipment will dedicate the flight planning hardware to serve this one purpose.   Given the cost of a good quality drone, the pilot training and certification, and the many compliance issues, iPads used for Site Scan Flight are not also expected to support email, navigation, social media, etc.).  [Please add any other issues for consideration] If you'd like to discuss your requirements further, please contact cbenkelman@esri.com ... View more

Crystal 1) for tutorials, yes.  See here for drone imagery: Create Drone Imagery Products in ArcGIS Pro—Imagery Workflows | Documentation  and here for scanned historical imagery: Create Scanned Aerial Imagery Products in ArcGIS Pro—Imagery Workflows | Documentation  2) regarding ArcMap vs. Pro, in general yes you can use ArcMap, since the geoprocessing (GP) tools used for Ortho Mapping in ArcGIS Pro are also available in ArcMap.  However, I strongly recommend you use Pro for several reasons. The GP tools for Ortho Mapping in ArcMap are at an older version (vs. Pro which have been updated through version 2.6),  ArcGIS Pro uses a workflow on the ribbon that helps with choosing the correct tools and setting parameters based on the data type (e.g. the best settings for drone imagery are different from film, or satellite, etc.) In addition, in Pro there are two visual interfaces that don’t exist in ArcMap: For measuring fiducials (applicable only to film),  And for marking ground control points (GCPs).  Without these graphical user interfaces in ArcMap, you can still enter coordinates for the fiducials and also for GCPs but that may require you to use other methods to identify the necessary coordinates. Cody B. ... View more

No, we've worked with point clouds with billions of points.  Can you tell us more information, e.g. which version of Pro are you using? what is the data source?  (If uav/drone, the points may be below ground) what is the behavior?  display slow?  some or all points not visible?  software crashes? are you using a LAS Dataset? Is the data LAS format?  Do you know the version of the LAS file? ... View more

The GoPro cameras should work, but I don't know of any proven tests.  If anyone reading this can provide sample metadata (xyz position from GPS, heading and pitch from other sensors, timestamp at a minimum) we'd be happy to test with our Video Multiplexer geoprocessing tool. See http://esriurl.com/FMVfaq for listing of metadata fields.  Ideally the data format would be correct "out of the box" but this can be edited before ingesting into ArcGIS.    Note this is not applicable to 360 degree panorama cameras; for support of 360 imagery (including video), see http://esriurl.com/OrientedImagery.  For the simple application you describe here, Oriented Imagery (compatible with ArcGIS Pro and the web, but not ArcMap) would meet your needs.   ... View more

Jerry thanks for following up on this.  I had not heard about this issue with the Wisconsin County Coordinate System (WISCRS) parameters but now we know why there are 2 versions of files in some cases.  (I'm glad they switched to offering *.prj files as the workaround - that's a very LOW data volume solution vs. creating separate LAS file copies). I've tested in ArcGIS Pro 2.6 and ArcMap 10.7.1, and the Wisconsin County Coordinate System (WISCRS) formatted data works properly.  Whatever caused the problem in the past has presumably been fixed, but users on older versions of the software may still need this workaround.  If you or anyone reading this needs further details please let me know. Cody B.  ... View more

I did a binary comparison, and those files are the same, with the exception of some metadata tags.  As for why they are there, I can't say.  I looked at several other counties on the Wisconsin server, and none of the others showed "Classified_LAS_esri" .  There appears to be quite a bit of variation in what is available from one county to the next - you'd have to ask them why this one county has different files for Esri vs. USGS.   Note ArcGIS can perform point classification, so perhaps this was a test they ran to compare classification results using ArcGIS vs. the classification provided by USGS. Cody B  ... View more

Jerry  Sorry for the delay - I did not see your post.  There should not be anything labeled "LAS ESRI" format so I'd ask the source (State of Wisconsin?) to clarify and likely change what they have written...  There is no LAS ESRI format unless they're referring to compressed data; we do have an open format referred to as zLAS for data compression.  If that's what they're hosting for download, their documentation should be more clear.  Could you post a link to where you found this? If this does refer to zLAS format and you need advice on that, let us know.  Briefly, zLAS is compressed roughly 6:1 and can be read/used directly in ArcGIS w/o decompression. Thanks Cody B. ... View more

George is correct to refer to the Imagery Workflows.  We have published a workflow specifically for multi-date and multi-resolution scanned maps here Introduction—Managing Scanned Maps | ArcGIS  ... View more

Vladimir the short answer is "nothing that I know of". If your cell phone can record the necessary metadata listed in http://esriurl.com/fmvFAQ  along with the video, you can then process the video and metadata file (CSV text format) in ArcGIS Pro using the Video Multiplexer, but I don't know of anyone that has tried this.   Note the metadata for supporting geospatially tagged video in http://esriurl.com/OrientedImagery would likely be simpler; see the schema here GitHub - Esri/oriented-imagery: Find developer resources for Oriented Imagery, including a Web AppBuilder widget and ori…   Cody B. ... View more

Diego there are several issues to consider - it is difficult to advise you without more information.  If you can make some time to read through recommendations for data management in ArcGIS Imagery Workflows | Documentation it will help you decide how to proceed.   Specifically I expect you will use the recommendations here  Introduction—Managing Preprocessed Orthophotos_Overview | ArcGIS   For a short answer, I would typically recommend you use a mosaic dataset to manage your data (before publishing an image service) and although the mosaic dataset is stored in a geodatabase, I do not recommend that your image files are loaded into a geodatabase.  the mosaic dataset can access them directly as files on disk.   Cody B ... View more

Chris thanks, this helps understand the context - however I'm concerned about trying to advise you with an ad-hoc workaround that may ultimately lead to bad results.   If you're trying to measure volumes of sand on a beach, accurate data products in (x,y,z) will be critical - and my advice is "this is impossible without high quality GPS for ground control".  Further, you said "sand loss" which implies you have a "before" dataset - either from a prior drone flight or perhaps lidar?  I don't believe you can hope to compare two datasets without high accuracy control points, and ideally use the same control for "before" and "after" or if the earlier dataset is lidar, perhaps you can use that for control (although I'm thinking it would only be usable along the road where you have hard structures, and if your control is limited to one side of a project, the other side can still drift up/down leading to measurement errors). Do you have a professional surveyor you can include in the project for advice?   Cody B.  ... View more

Chris I've been intending to reply but just juggling a lot of tasks.  this will be brief, will probably need more discussion. Yes you need to reprocess unless you're publishing in ArcGIS Online - in the web we can apply a simple vertical offset. you said "3D maps" so I assume you mean the mesh and/or point  cloud?  if you mean the DSM/DTM then adjusting a raster is different, and does NOT need to go through reprocessing (although that may be advised). Last, do you expect precise Z alignment, or are you just seeking to get close enough to the default Esri world terrain so the drone products are visible and not obviously 'floating'? Have you tried adding control points from the map?  That extracts Z values from the default Esri world terrain but if you're in an area of natural vegetation I appreciate finding the correct (x,y) is a challenge and you don't want to shift your data horizontally with a sloppy control point... Can you let me know the original vertical offset (before you attempted adjustment)?  It may be the difference between ellipsoidal (GPS) vs. orthometric height for your site, based on the  quality & settings of GPS from your drone.  if true, that's a method to analytically determine the Z offset   Cody ... View more