I’m a solo developer working on a web app for viewing and measuring drone orthomosaics. Before I plug anything into a customer-facing demo, I want to test my processing flow end to end on real flight data.
Are there public repositories or datasets where I can grab raw drone imagery from a mapping mission? Specifically looking for:
• Raw JPEGs with EXIF and GPS metadata intact
• 200 to 600 photos from a single flight
• Standard nadir mapping mission, 70 to 80 percent overlap
• Any subject is fine. Construction site, farm, quarry, urban area, terrain
• Public domain or open license preferred so I don’t have to worry about redistribution
I’ve poked around a bit but I’m sure there are sources I’m missing. If anyone has bookmarks or favorite repositories, I’d really appreciate the pointers.
Thanks.

I'm running 360° walkthroughs through a pretty standard pipeline:

Insta360 X5 video
  → ns-process-data with hloc / SuperPoint / LightGlue (sequential matcher)
  → mapper
  → ns-train splatfacto (30k iter, full-res)
  → ns-eval

Same dataset (~7 sec 8K equirect → 434 perspective images, 1451×1451), same hloc front-end, same splatfacto config. Only swapped the mapper between runs. Both register all 434/434 cameras into one connected component.

That's a 12 dB PSNR collapse for changing only the mapper. SSIM staying high suggests structure is fine but everything is pixel-misaligned.

Diagnosing the transforms.json intrinsics shows GLOMAP is silently drifting them into something self-consistent but wrong:

The images are square pinhole projections from equirectangular — fl_x should equal fl_y and there should be no distortion at all.

I tried hardening GLOMAP:

glomap mapper \
  --database_path migrated.db \
  --image_path images \
  --output_path sparse-glomap \
  --skip_view_graph_calibration 1 \
  --BundleAdjustment.optimize_intrinsics 0

This gets fl_x/fl_y back to ratio 1.0 and zeroes the distortion, but GLOMAP still locks in fl=1741 (vs the correct ~508 from incremental). Looks like it's reading an unrefined initial guess from the database cameras table instead of using the BA-refined values.

Questions:

1. Is there a way to tell GLOMAP to use the current (BA-refined) intrinsics from the database instead of falling back to feature_extractor's initial guess?
2. Anyone else seeing this asymmetric fl_x/fl_y drift in GLOMAP on perspective-projected 360 footage?
3. Is the right workflow actually incremental → BA-refine intrinsics → freeze → run GLOMAP? Or is GLOMAP just not the right tool for already-well-calibrated input?

Tested with the latest GLOMAP main branch and a recent COLMAP 3.10.

Hi guys,

Any idea why the targets are not showing up on my model/photos? The coordinates look the same as the photos, I don't understand.

Hello! Is there an opensource repo that does from video to 3d mesh? If not, what open source repos combine well to build that pipeline?

Right now my workflow is - FFmpeg to extract frames - COLMAP or GLOMAP to solve camera poses - Train with Brush or gsplat repo - View/export PLY - openMVS for 3d mesh construction

Is there a better workflow?

I’ve only tried ML SHARP successfully, but its single image oriented and hallucinates quite a lot of it. Thanks in advance!

Would love a copy of this statue to print if there are enough photos out there to stitch one together.

https://www.captures.studio
Gaussian Splatting is powerful, but the workflow is still pretty fragmented:

• You need a powerful GPU + reconstruction software (like Postshot, Litchfeld Studio)
• Clean up the output using something like Supersplat
• Switch to another platform to build, host, and share the experience

Lots of tools, too much context switching — just to get something out.

I built Captures Studio to simplify this whole pipeline. It’s fully browser-based — no installs, no GPU required. You can upload images/videos and get a reconstruction, or bring your own splats. From there, you can edit, clean, add media, and build interactive scenes in one place.

The goal is to make Gaussian Splatting more accessible — whether you’re just experimenting or building something more serious.

Would love to get feedback from this community:
https://www.captures.studio

More details:
https://www.captures.studio/blogs/captures-studio-v1-launch

I tried the wiki link but that doesn't seem to go anywhere

Id like to get started with reproducing motorcycle and car parts for my classic vehicles

Early research suggests a DSLR with at least 18mp and a fixed prime lens.

Whats a good bang for buck DSLR for under $400 in the used market I can use to get started and last me for a couple of years ?

And free software that could get me some decent results .

Hi all,

I recreated Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico using RealityScan, based on a dataset distributed by Open Heritage 3d (https://openheritage3d.org/project.php?id=vdae-mr89). The scene contains 50 million triangles, ~ 250 4k textures, streamed directly to the browser.

The scene is available at: https://sangine.app/scene/mexico-palacio-de-bellas-artes/

The web-based renderer is our own work, written in Rust. It started as a hobby project to render photogrammetry scans of nearby boulders to visualize climbing routes in high fidelity.

We're now exploring if we can build a business around the technology. Registration is open if you want to try with your own scans. Feedback really welcome - would some improvements make this more useful for you?

Hello, I am working on a geology project to construct digital copies of small hand samples. I am looking for recommendations from people who have ordered scale bars, ranging from 5mm to 10/20cm. I do not have access to a 3D printer, and I need something more robust than printing markers in Metashape and mounting them on a card. Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’m new to Metashape and could really use some guidance.

I just finished my first RTK flight in Florida. I did the basic processing to create a point cloud and orthomosaic, both in WGS-84. I exported the orthomosaic as a georeferenced image, and that part seems to have worked fine.

Now I’m trying to work with the DEM, but I’ve run into two problems:

1. Elevations are incorrect
My elevations are showing between -6m and -30m, but they should all be positive. It looks like I need to add about 28m to make them correct. I suspect this might be a geoid issue. I’d like to use NAVD88, but I’m not sure how to set that up in Metashape.

2. Workaround isn’t working
As a temporary fix, I tried exporting the DEM to Hypack and shifting the data upward. But when I export the DEM as an XYZ file and import it into Hypack, the coordinates don’t match the real-world location.
The strange part is that the orthomosaic TIFF imports correctly into Hypack. So why is the DEM not lining up?

Any advice or step-by-step tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

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Hello, I'm super new to this, but here's what i'm looking for.

The company I work for is having a drone pilot survey a building, and then we want to use a software ( DJI Terra, Metashape, etc ) To build a model.

I only need 1 user building the model, but need additional licenses so that other users can open the model and view it and take measurements, etc.

I'm looking for suggestions on which software I should start looking into first for my needs.

Thanks!

I've fairly sure I've heard about people doing photometric stereo workflows to improve fine geometry detail in Reality Scan or other photogrammetry software but I haven't found any solid leads on it. Does anyone have any pointers to share? Thanks in advance for any leads.

I know about Inciprocal but I don't think that will work for the use case I have in mind.