Drone flight planning, from boundary to KMZ.

A photogrammetry mission is a serpentine flight pattern flown at a fixed altitude with carefully chosen overlap. Get the parameters wrong and you get gaps, blur, or a 4-hour battery-swap saga. Get them right and the drone does the rest.

§ 01The interactive planner

Drag the sliders. The serpentine flight path redraws, the photo count, ground sampling distance, and battery estimate update on every input. This is the same math the mapplot app uses inside the planner.

§ 02The four parameters that matter

Every photogrammetry flight is a tradeoff between four numbers. The planner above lets you feel the relationships directly — but here is the brief:

§ 03Altitude × footprint × resolution

Doubling the altitude quadruples the area each photo covers — but the ground sampling distance also doubles, halving your detail. The illustration below shows the tradeoff:

§ 04Why we fly serpentines

Photogrammetry needs the same point on the ground photographed from multiple angles, so software can triangulate its 3D position. A serpentine — also called a lawnmower or boustrophedon pattern — guarantees consistent overlap in both directions across a rectangular area. Every interior point is seen by 6 to 12 photographs, more than enough for robust reconstruction.

§ 05Pre-flight checklist

Once the planner gives you a mission you like, verify the following before takeoff:

§ 06From planner to controller

mapplot exports your planned mission as a standards-compliant .kmz file. Transfer it to your DJI controller via USB or the DJI Pilot 2 app, load it as a custom waypoint mission, and the drone flies the route autonomously. No proprietary file formats, no per-mission cloud roundtrip.

§ NEXTRelated field-guide pages