Next phases? Higher resolution capture .. Going from 7cm typical to 4cm (already see some of these in places) to even 2cm will be a game changer. Keep in mine, 7cm to 2cm is not 3.5x the data, but rather 12x. 2cm is knocking on drone capture.
Drones themselves will also be deployed in due course - potentially meaning more frequent update capability, higher resolution again perhaps, wider/cheaper coverage. They may even add lidar - again, solid-state lidar and other advances in that field will mean the price drops for sensors. A Riegl mini-vux will set you back about $250k. Add a Phaseone camera, there's another $100k. Both of those techs will be half that price in a year.
This all means better 3D products for starters, way more compute required, but that is fixed to a degree thanks for Moore's Law.
Drones get interesting. Permanent on-station capture? Video capabiility? End-user-programmable capture - book a drone flight to capture your road upgrade? Programme a mine/constructure site flight? Who knows where that goes, but it only makes the "back end" even more important.
AI products will only improve - and higher resolution may well lead to even more effective AI - maybe pothole analysis, pavement cracking etc - although cracking may be optimistic from aerial imagery.
An automated, scheduled drone flight, at 2cm GSD, converted to mesh + point cloud, could be downloaded the next day, loaded into Revit or Civil 3D to check volume calcs, stockpiles, as-constructed etc - could be loaded straight into BIM360. This all needs the flying, the back-end, the automation etc.
Nearmap and 3DP are different beasts - Nearmap captures and generates content and the pipelines/automation for that are important.
3DP merely hosts others content and I've said before, I still have no idea why 3DP is having the run it is. There are other providers with better products, there are even free products if you could be bothered to implement. Cinto, Ceasium, Potree etc are all more than capable of hosting point cloud data. We also use Leica Truview and Jetstream servers. Faro Webshare, Navvis IndoorViewer, Euclieon Vault. There are plenty of products. 3DP may currently have the edge on sales as a provider (and it is turn-key), compared to fractured supplier-implements-their-own server product, but if you use point cloud now - 3DP is borderline useless. You need the point clouds in the design software - so we load the point clouds into Revit, Autocad, Navis etc and create models from the point cloud. Browsing around is handy, but it is not that effective. You could host tiles of data without the requirement of fancy hosting - take ELVIS for example.
NEA Price at posting:
$3.00 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
