Licence Renewal 😕

ROCK Cloud
1

Its coming to 12 months since I started using the R3 Pro and the Rock suite of products and so I will soon need to renew my licences.

I’m having a hard time getting some straight up pricing and renewal options out of the sales team.

Has anyone renewed recently? Which options did you go for?

Rock Desktop $2000 seems reasonable.
Rock SLAM is $5000 which is a bit difficult to swallow when we have already paid $8000 for the SLAM Dock v2 originally. If we don’t renew Rock SLAM processing, the SLAM dock becomes a paper weight!

Then there is Rock Photogrammettry that just doesn work properly, especially on larger projects, so I have to self process orthos in Agisoft Metashape to get a satisfactory result.
I feel like I have been a beta tester for the past 12 months.

Finally, for Rock Cloud, there seem to be Business and Enterprise plans but on the whole, pricing is not transparent, but the pricing biased towards having it.

Anyone else recently been through the rewnewal process?

2

this didn’t instill much confidence…

3

Yep, it has not been the best experience. I do now have renewal pricing but it was painful. I had to ask specific questions to get the answers I wanted.

I dont know why it had to be so difficult.

4

i agree with most of what you are saying. i want to do mobile mount but the slam pricing is too high. so we have not done it.

the photogrammetry mostly works for us. there was an update last fall that maybe helped because there were a few that did not prior to that update. we always choose the middle pixel size and that might help.
i said mostly because we have two issues. first the ortho is always too dark even on a sunny day. if anyone has tips please let me know. i did what the rock tech told me to do and went into the rock camera prior to flight, but i saw no settings that i could change(m350), plus this is the only time the m350 missions messed up and would not resume after battery swap.
second when we reproject in rock cloud the ortho does not shift to utm.

what i really want to see is rock desktop have the same functions as rock cloud. at minimum reproject and control points. it is a heck if a waste of time for me to load the project to the cloud, wait through the reproject, wait for the export creation, then download again. this makes me not want to pay for rock cloud. this seems like a money grab to force you onto the rock cloud. i would rather pay more for desktop then waste time uploading and downloading.

other frustrations: give the option for base coordinate in a different coordinate system, save the recurring coordinate systems, enter output coordinate system at the start of the process and output in this system(we are getting clogged with extra files that do not need to exist) allow for range gate changes on flight segments not globally, create arrow to highlight segment selection so it can be done when zoomed out, allow tweaks to orthophoto (spot changed, i have a flight with a quick blizzard that shows black where it came through, cars leave black marks and brightness), tilling in desktop. all these things are extra steps and waste time and risk errors/poor returns.

1 Like
5

@ianhbhlandsurveying I had the same issue with dark ortho, the rock camera is fixed at 1/800 shutter speed. i’ll post a new thread with a solution.

As for renewal, I am being forced to use a lusb licence dongle for rock desktop, which also means I have to pay shipping and import taxes to UK. There is no explanation as to why I can’t use a licence key as I am at the moment.

There has been mention of a 2 year renwal also and my questions just seem to get ignored.
I will post back with the final results, renewal is being finalised this week.

The whole thing has given me buyer remorse. :confused:

6

My work flow is:

  1. rock desktop for proprietary processing,
  2. Autodesk Recap for conversion to state plane feet and rcp/rcs file, for import to Civil3D or export e57 file,
  3. If needed ortho mosaic in Recap Photo.

This is maybe the last year for my using slam as it is just not as accurate as aerial even with one single loop on 5+ gcp per file, but certainly great for memorializing high detail. I previously tried multi loops in one file and was off in elevation by a foot or so, but now off by a couple of tenths with single loop per file.
Somehow they were able to significantly drop the price of R3ProV2 this year so the result is likely making processing an even more important revenue source.

Also Stitch3D is useful for showing point clouds, to clients, architects, and engineers.

7

patriotlands.
we have not used recap as it seems like a flimsy software but would consider it if it really allows massive clouds into civil. not sure how many million points but lets say 10 plus batteries worth.
we typically link x y z decimated ground files to any surface in civil. other extraction can happen in tbc.
interestingly tbc can export an rcp file. but when i tried to load it into civil it did not work.

8

jason. seems unfair to have to have a dongle. you should ask to talk to the boss.
i would be interested in your solution to brighten the photo. i can do it in qgis usually. but have had a few when it was late in the day and as the day got darker the strips would not blend. it was not unreasonably dark out, but also overcast. also had dark ones over a sunny day and snow so it should have shown white.

i would also be interested to know how you pulled the location data for the photos to run in a photogrametry software. maybe your software does not require this, but would be nice to use the ppk position on the photos if possible. if you ever have some spare time.

thanks. ian@hbhlandsurveying.ca

9

Andrew from support reached out to me to put this right, which I appreciate.
The sales team has gone through some changes recently and so the people dealing with my request were not fully up to speed.

We discussed the options and were able to work out a renewal and answer my questions.

My main problem was that the sales team were simply sending me prices without understand my requirements or answering any of my questions, leading to confusion and also the fear of paying for something I don’t need or want.

To answer the queries:
2 Year Rewnewal:
This was my mistake. The renewal quote / invoice says ‘Yr 2 Renewal’. Eg 2nd year renewal, not 2 year renewal!

USB Dongle:
Rock’s licencing supplier have increased their prices which is being passed onto the customer. So, if you want licence key it will cost you approx $2000 more than settling for the USB dongle.
If you want to avoid the price hike, the USB dongle licence is the option to choose which has its own pro’s & cons.

Pricing as of April 2025
There is a bundle available and there are also different levels of Rock Cloud, depending on your requirements.

Pricing will depending on the following:

  • Aerial processing
  • SLAM processing
  • Colorised SLAM processing
  • Mobile SLAM processing

Individual Pricing:

  • ROCK Desktop PPK Pre-Processing License (USB): $2,000
  • ROCK SLAM Color Processing Subscription: $6,000
  • ROCK Photogrammetry Subscription: $4,000

Rock Cloud
Business Plan - 500Gb Storage, 1 User
Enterprise Plane - 2TB Storage, upto 5 users

  • ROCK Cloud Business Plan Renewal: $3,500/year
  • ROCK Cloud Enterprise Plan Renewal: $6,000/year

Bundle Pricing:
R3 Pro V2 Aerial and SLAM
Year 2 Software Bundle Price for the purchased package (PPK Desktop USB + Photogrammetry + Cloud) + SLAM: $4,250 /year

Bundles

  • Aerial-only PPK processing: $2,000/year (USB dongle)
  • Aerial + SLAM PPK processing: Aerial + SLAM - $4250/year (license key)
  • Aerial + Mobile PPK processing: Aerial + SLAM + Mobile - $5,000/year (license key)

Conclusion
I went for the bundle option with Rock Cloud Business Plan.
Rock Desktop PPK Desktop USB Licence, includes:
Rock Desktop (Aerial + Colorised SLAM + Photogrammetry + Rock Cloud Business)
$4,250 /year

We got there in the end. Thanks to @andrew.genco for helping resolve the situation :+1:

I will create a thread shortly about RGB images & ortho’s!

Thanks
Jason