Månedlige arkiver: april 2016

Memento Mori -reborne to Remake

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It has been a joyful ride to follow the development of Memento the last couple of years. They have made photogrammetry intuitive, and changed the way my colleges and me have been working as architects.

I am happy to see products that has been in Beta, released as commercial product when they are matured and ready. For Memento, I understand that this will happen i May. Last Friday they released the last Beta version of Memento and the announced that the official product name will be Autodesk Remake.

They released couple of new features in the last Beta and you can read about them in detail here. One of the features that has been wanted for a long time is the «Offline reconstruction». This feature will enable you to process your images on your local computer instead of sending it to the Autodesk servers. This process is computationally very intensive and from the recommended specs that you find here, you may want to upgrade your computer…

I also feel that an epoch has ended. An epoch of an unlimited playground of testing and playing that was free and noncommittal. That is something that is a rare experience in our digital world and has made Memento, in addition to its intuitive tools, unique.

I am looking forward seeing the final commercial release and I will follow Memento closely in the future. I hope the software team manage to keep Autodesk Remake as intuitive and uncompromising as possible, and that they not are trying to solve too many problems in one software.

Phantom 4 -love at first sight

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Three weeks ago, I had never flown a real drone before. However, since my appetite for reality capture has been growing lately, I felt it was time to invest in a drone that could be used for photogrammetry. Therefore, after comparing/evaluating/comparing again different types of drones, I finally decided to buy the Phantom 4.

I am always afraid of being disappointed when I finally receive something that I have been waiting for a long time, but in this case, it was no need to worry. DJI made even the unboxing an Apple-like feeling, and when the drone was revealed I was stunned by the sexy and elegant design. I was so starstruck that it was the first time in my life that I read the manual, saw all the instruction videos on YouTube, before I even turned it on. The Phantom 4 became «my precious».

When I finally had the guts to try it outdoor, it was a joyful experience. The software was intuitive, the controller felt solid and precise, and the drone was responsive. I have tested out most of the features like the «activetrack», «tapfly», «obstacle sensing system», «return to home» and many more. I do start to trust these features, but it still feels crazy to fly the drone with full speed towards a wall and trust the «obstacle sensing system» to automatically stop your drone before it crashes.

I have also tested the Pix4D app with the Phantom 4 two times already. It is a great app and I will review it in a later blogpost. I generated a Sketchfab model from my latest flight. You can see the result below:

At the moment I am not using «my precious» for commercial use. I want to be a better pilot first, and I need to apply to the Civil Aviation Authority to get the right approval. This is important to me, since I see the potential danger a drone can cause.