wanted to start a new thread indicating a wish list for upgrades to how rock desktop functions.
i have mentioned these things to the rock team with not much traction yet. maybe some support from others would get things looked at. also with the release of ultra i am a little frustrated that there is not more development on rock desktop as it seems like it is a ways off from being fully user friendly.
1-being able to enter your base station coordinate in a system other than wgs84 lat long. allow the same reproject coordinate systems as cloud.
2-prompt for output coordinate system at start of processing (same as reproject in cloud) and pump the data out in that system. it is many steps for me to upload to cloud, wait for ever to reproject, wait for ever to export new laz, then wait for ever to download from cloud. i have better things to do then constantly check the status a wait on all these steps. same for the ortho.
3-the trajectory selection is clunky. is there even a way to split a trajectory if it has been deleted and reinstated with the plus to a longer line?? make the trajectory selectable on the map and slide it there to where you want it. allow split segments on the map(never actually tried, is this possible now?)
4-allow gate range/angle gate on different trajectory segments. if it is global then increasing adds error to whole project. lets say you have a deep gully, allow increase there. would be even better as a box select tool. lets say you need more angle over a electric tower or next to a wide building, box select and increase angle gate there, but keep the rest of the 60 degree down data as is.
5-allow for ortho cleanup. colour cleanup of dark ones and patch clean in funny areas. i have seen other software prompt you to force a photo or two in a box area to clean a patch. also line blur if tile to tile is bad.
6-only show one status bar during processing for all the steps. or show all the steps needed as a list and which it is on and how far it is on that step.
o you are at 90% step 3/3, o wait now you are at 0 of 1/3 of something else. don t make sense right now.
7-give error messages that are helpful for every to help troubleshoot. not the generic list of pretty much everything you did is wrong.
for now any and all of these would make the software way better. way less frustrating. thanks.
The lack of useful error messages is particularly challenging with the software. Being given a general error and a list of possible issues (ROCK Desktop Processing Error Triage!), most of which the solution is to “re-fly the survey area”, is really time consuming. We purchased a second license for offline use in the field so that data can be checked at the end of the day, but we’ve yet to successfully be able to use it between the security configuration on our devices interfering with the dongle licensing and the constant Rock Desktop updates which then set off our security software again.
We switched from using Rock Cloud to using TerraScan UAV to project the point clouds, correct to ground control, and produce accuracy reports. TerraScan operates locally so there’s no time lost uploading and downloading large datasets and the ground control identification process is much faster. TerraScan uses the intensity data and the shape of your targets to automatically identify them. It’s also nice to be able to get an accuracy report without having to order some kind of deliverable.
Being able to transform the coordinate system and also align to control would be very helpful. We have clients that will not let us upload data to the cloud, so we have to finish processing in TBC. It would be nice to just be able to do it all in one place.
thanks for backing me up guys. we also run tbc and so do not want to have to pay or waste time with another software. like terra.
brian. i am curious about your transformation parameters in tbc. we have had issues trying to make it work. especially aligning to orthometric(making sure geod undulation is accounted for) and not having the horizontal transformation skew the vertical. aligning to gcp s is fine there with us, but i want it correct to start with for areas were gcp s are impossible or very difficult.
thanks.
Thank you for the feedback @ianhbhlandsurveying and @Melissa and @Bsteiner0914. We really appreciate hearing from folks! We don’t want you to feel like you haven’t been heard.
We are currently focusing on giving more useful error messages when problems do occur. To that end, ROCK Desktop will now review your base station data before processing begins to give useful feedback on 1) time overlap with flight, 2) collecting all of the required constellations, etc…
We also added more direct and useful error messages when we can programmatically determine certain calibration steps were missed. However, It is not always easy to programmatically determine the specific reason why a trajectory fails to process and it may take a human eye to look at the specific flight. In that case, our Support team is here to help!