RTK / PPKComing soon
Stream Capture reads the RTK or PPK positions your drone wrote into its photos, uses them as the georeference and then tells you in the report how close the result is to independent ground truth. It does not compute the PPK correction itself: it consumes positions that were already corrected.
Stream Capture is in development and not released yet. At launch it will come in the same download as its sister program Stream Terrain; today's download contains Stream Terrain.
RTK corrects the drone's position during the flight from a base or network; PPK corrects it after the flight from recorded base data. Either way the corrected position ends up in each photo's metadata or in an accompanying record, and mapping software can use it as the camera position, which reduces or removes the need for ground control points.
A good camera position is not the same as a correct map. Offsets between the drone's coordinate frame and your ground survey, lens errors and weak photo overlap can all remain. That is why Stream Capture reports measured error and does not stop at "RTK fixed".
EXIF GPS, XMP tags and the RTK records that survey drones write beside their photos are read for centimetre-level camera positions with per-axis accuracy. The health check reports the share of RTK-fixed frames.
The position written by an RTK drone is already the camera centre, so Stream Capture does not apply the antenna-to-camera offset a second time.
The accuracy a drone reports per axis weights its position in the adjustment. For photos from consumer-grade GPS the position acts only as a soft prior — 3 m horizontal and 5 m vertical when nothing is reported — and camera centres stay free.
If positions look suspect, the camera poses can be rebuilt from the photos alone, and with the RTK path the engine returns to the positions if that fails.
If cameras are not tied into the main block, or are connected only to neighbours in one direction, the engine says so by name and the report flags the weak tie network, instead of delivering a quietly distorted model.
Fix photo coordinates, or enter them for photos that have none, in the Image Properties Editor. Photos you do not edit keep their own position.
Not for a good horizontal position: RTK alone usually gives that. Height is the weak axis, where a systematic offset between the drone's frame and the ground survey can remain; control points reduce it, and independent check points measure it.
No. It does not compute the correction from raw satellite logs. It uses the corrected positions that your PPK software or drone has already written into the photos.
Both can give centimetre positions. RTK needs a link to a base or network during the flight; PPK does not, and corrects afterwards. For Stream Capture the result is the same kind of input: corrected positions in the photo metadata.
It depends on your drone, camera, overlap and altitude. The quality report measures yours if you give it check points.
Yes. The photos are read the same way, but consumer GPS positions are only a soft prior, so absolute accuracy is limited by them. Add ground control points when position accuracy matters.
EXIF GPS tags, XMP metadata and the RTK records that survey drones write alongside their photos.
Stream Capture is in development and not released yet. At launch it will come in the same download as its sister program Stream Terrain; today's download contains Stream Terrain.
About Stream Capture