Thanks for cutting through the jargon. Yes totally useless and utterly misleading figure. Misleading the industry and depriving the professionals. The industry relies on safety and accountability trails. The whole point of these turnkey systems to the industry is to provide a rigorous accuracy reports. Anyway I can’t see them lasting long along this route.
Actually the UAS and software setup used in $12,000. A solo with the nice new Sony R10C. Very expensive. Again it’s all about the software integration with current major players like autodesk BIM. But that integration is very simple and actually not that great.
Pix4d also offer a platform Pix4DBIM which incorporates a timeline and project management system independent of autodesk BIM which runs at EUR4000/yr which would seem the more sensible route to an independent mapping company.
I’m also looking into opensource solutions involving VisualSFM and Mesher. To completely remove software overheads. Clients have their own project management solutions so just delivering data is all I require.
I’d be interested to hear what route other professionals are taking.