Mapping flight · May 31, 2026
Grimsel · Berner Oberland · 3.7 ha
The Grimsel Pass at around 2,200 m above sea level — high-alpine terrain of the kind that utilities, mountain railways and developers commission surveys for. This was a test flight with a DJI Matrice 4T: the focus is the terrain, not a photorealistic reconstruction of the individual buildings — that would be produced separately and in addition if needed. The interactive map and 3D model below show a representative excerpt of the pass; the complete dataset from the flight is available on request.
1882 photos · 136.9 M points · 2.8 cm GSD
Orthophoto
An orthomosaic is a scale-accurate aerial image — every pixel carries a real GPS coordinate. You can measure directly in it (lengths, areas, distances), import it as a layer in GIS software, or use it for government permit submissions. What you see here is the real result of this flight, served from a tiled GeoTIFF pyramid — drag and zoom to navigate.
Note: the interactive views on this page are served at reduced resolution. The full dataset of this flight is around 10 GB — too heavy to stream smoothly to phones and lower-powered computers. Want to see full-resolution samples? Get in touch via the contact form.
Textured 3D model
The 3D model shows every surface of the site with real photo texture — ground, vegetation, structures. It works for visualisations in marketing and sales materials, for volume and mass calculations on construction sites, and as a shared discussion surface in planning meetings. Compressed glTF binary loaded directly in the browser, no external viewer service needed — drag to rotate, scroll to zoom.
Smoothest on desktop. On a slow connection the first load can take a few seconds.
Surface Model (DSM)
The Digital Surface Model captures the top envelope of the site — ground plus everything standing on it: vegetation, buildings, power lines. Colour tones encode elevation directly (warmer = higher, cooler = lower). Used for volume calculations, shadow analysis and high-point identification.
Terrain Model (DTM)
The Digital Terrain Model shows only the bare ground — vegetation, buildings and other structures are filtered out. From it you compute real landforms, drainage, excavation volumes and realistic elevation profiles for construction planning. Generated from the classified ground points of the point cloud.
Plant Health (NDVI)
When flown with a multispectral sensor, the Plant Health analysis delivers an NDVI layer (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) — a map that reads vegetation vitality from the ratio between red and near-infrared reflectance. Standard for agriculture, forestry and vegetation monitoring.
Numbers
- Area
- 3.7 ha
- Photos (captured / reconstructed)
- 1882
- Point cloud (dense)
- 136.9 M
- Flight time
- ~15 min
- Elevation profile
- 2167 → 2246 m
- GCPs required
- 0
- Precision
- 2.8 cm GSD
What the client receives
A single delivery contains every format engineering, marketing and government workflows need. You don't need to convert files afterwards or order anything as an add-on — what's captured on the flight day arrives as a complete package. The list below is exactly what came out of this flight.
- Orthomosaic · GeoTIFF, 70 MB
- Full point cloud · LAZ, 46 M points
- Ground-classified point cloud · LAZ, 23.7 M points
- DSM — Digital Surface Model · GeoTIFF
- DTM — Digital Terrain Model · GeoTIFF
- Textured 3D mesh · GLB · OBJ · FBX
- Open processing report (PDF, 20 MB)
Full dataset on request
We provide the complete raw dataset of this flight (~10 GB: all original photos, point clouds, georeferenced models) on request. Just get in touch via the contact form.
Go to the contact formEquipment & processing
Which equipment flies and which software processes the data determines the precision and the available delivery formats. On this site, RTK meant no ground control points (GCPs) were needed — what would otherwise cost half a survey day on a standard property.
- DJI Matrice 4T
- GNSS georeferencing · ~1 m absolute, no GCPs
- Standard Processing — included in the package price, no hourly billing
- SMRF ground classification · alpine relief (79 m elevation range)
Methodology
The flight was done with a DJI Matrice 4T at the Grimsel pass in the Bernese Oberland, at roughly 2200 m above sea level in steep, high-alpine terrain. Georeferencing relied solely on the onboard GNSS/GPS, without ground control points, giving an absolute positional accuracy of about 1 metre. RTK only reached float status, not fixed. So this is not a centimetre-accurate survey result in absolute terms, even though the ground resolution comes to around 2.8 cm.
The flight ran as an autonomous grid mission with terrain-following at about 70 m above ground. Terrain-following is essential on this steep terrain so that the ground resolution stays constant across the area. Forward and side overlap were each 83 percent, producing 1882 photos in a capture window of about 15 minutes. This was a test flight focused on the terrain, not a photorealistic reconstruction of individual buildings.
The roughly 15 minutes of actual flight time are only the tip of a full working day. Before it come travel, on-site reconnaissance, mission planning and the setup in the field. After it follows several hours of data processing at the computer. The short capture time hides the real effort involved.
Processing was done with OpenDroneMap at ultra quality, our premium tier. From this come a dense point cloud, an SMRF ground-point classification, a DSM and DTM, a textured 3D mesh and an orthomosaic. All of it is included in the package price, with no hourly billing, and a processing report PDF is attached. The interactive map and 3D model show a representative excerpt of the pass; the full dataset of around 10 GB is available on request.
Open processing report (PDF, 20 MB)What this request would look like in the calculator
If you run the calculator with this flight's parameters, here's what you get. Same engine, same prices — the whole showcase is a quote you can touch.
Inputs
- Project type
- Surveying / Mapping
- Location
- Grimsel · Berner Oberland
- Road distance from Zürich
- 120 km
- Scope
- Property
- Precision
- Visual
- Output
- Plus 3D mesh + ground LAZ
- Spotters
- No, simple operation
- Lead time
- Flexible (>4 weeks)
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