Planning a good mapping flight

Good output starts in the air. Three settings do most of the work: overlap, altitude, and the ground sampling distance (GSD) they produce.

Overlap

Overlap is how much each photo shares with the next. For clean maps, aim for roughly 75–80% front overlap and 65–75% side overlap. More overlap means more photos and longer processing, but it's the single biggest lever on reconstruction quality — especially over vegetation, water, or uniform surfaces.

Altitude and GSD

Lower flights capture finer detail (smaller GSD) but cover less ground per photo. Fly high enough to finish the site efficiently, low enough to resolve the detail you care about. If you need centimetre detail on a small feature, plan a lower pass over just that area.

Practical tips

• Fly in consistent light — hard shadows and changing exposure hurt matching.
• Keep the camera nadir (straight down) for maps; add oblique passes for 3D (see nadir vs oblique).
• Don't clip the edges — extend the flight a little past the area of interest so the boundary reconstructs cleanly.