TopoFlight came out of real photogrammetric needs ranging from simple terrain to very difficult mountainous areas. It has been fully tested under easy and very complicated conditions (Flotron AG, Switzerland accomplished several projects with thousands of images in the Swiss Alps with big differences in terrain, flying height and scale). The coordinates of the photo positions and the area of coverage and sidelap are calculated by using a digital terrain model. Thus, gaps along a flight line or between lines can't develop. Furthermore, the amount of exposure is minimized as the requested forwardlap for each stereopair is calculated individually which leads to adequate but not too many frames.

 

Calculation With Digital Elevation Models

TopoFlight works with a variety of different DEM types as e.g. xyz-textfiles, SRTM (download and transformation option is implemented in TopoFlight), USGS DEM, GeoTiff and Matrix DEM (.bin).
TopoFlight uses the DEM information to compute the best fitting flying height to achieve the requested image scale or GSD. At the same time the coordinates of every image center are computed by calculating the distance between subsequent images. In addition, TopoFlight computes parameters as minimal, mean and maximal overlap and scale etc. for single images and each flight lines.

 

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Sensors

TopoFlight can be used to plan air photograph and LIDAR missions and hence supports frame (analog and digital), line and LIDAR sensors. If your requested sensor is not defined yet it's very easy to add it by specifiying the most important parameters.

 

Area Covered By Strip

The effective covered area by the images of each strip is calculated and displayed.

 

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Area Of Sidelap

The area of sidelap is calculated and displayed.

 

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Standard File Formats

TopoFlight works with multiple layers and stores the generated flight plans in the widely used shape format (ESRI). Additional raster or vector layers can be added as reference files. These files can be on hand in various well known formats (e.g. dxf, dgn, tiff with tfw-header, geotiff, gml/xml, kml etc.).

 

Projections And Coordinate Systems

TopoFlight supports hundreds of different projection systems (from version 7 on you can choose between metric and feet). A lot of definitions are already done (e.g. state plane coordinate system, UTM NAD83 etc.). If the requested one is missing it's very easy to add a new one either manually or by reading ESRI prj-files. 
TopoFlight provides the transformation from one coordinate system into another (normally local grid to/from WGS84).

 

Planning In Latitude / Longitude

From Version 6 on it's possible to do the flight planning directly in latitude/longitude (WGS84) which allows much easier processing for huge projects covering more than one projection zone.

 

AOIs

When dealing with AOIs and a regular line pattern TopoFlight provides the possibility to automatically generate the flight lines. Just define and activate the AOI, draw the first line to define the flight direction and let TopoFlight do the rest!

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Ground Control Points

Existing ground control points can be imported and annotated. Ground control points can also be placed and moved all in order to provide the surveyor with coordinates and maps for proper targeting.

 

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Tools

TopoFlight offers a wide range of tools. Furthermore, TopoFlight offers the possibility to work with shortcuts (from version 7 on).

Information tools                            scales, GSD, number of images, line length…

Measuring tools                              distances, areas

Line Manipulation                           construct, modify, move/copy, add, break, change flying height, reverse                                                               orientation, delete, renumber, tag and create neat models. The deleting                                                               feature includes the option to work with an AOI to delete multiple lines or                                                           image centers

Ground Control Points                    Import, place, move, set number, delete, export

AOI                                                    add, modify, delete, activate

Print                                                  print and copy to clipboard

Grid                                                   Display of a grid with selectable spacing

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Maps for quality assesment

The creation of maps for quality assessment (version 7) offers the perfect possibility to check and modulate your flight plans. Choose which parameters you would like to display: GSD, No. of rays or scale (for photogrammetric missions) as well as height above ground and No. of points/m2 (for LIDAR missions).
Below an example for images scale and points/m2.

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Import

TopoFlight provides the option of importing flight lines (known start and end coordinates) or images centers (e.g. abGPS data) from previous flights or accomplished missions. This is very useful if, as an example, after some years some flight lines have to be reflown or if you want to execute a quality check of your flight missions.

 

Export

TopoFlight offers a wide range of export options:

• Excel (use of templates for a fast quotation generation)

• Textfiles (free formated by choosing which parameters should be exported)

• Flight Management Systems (TrackAir, CCNS, ASCOT, Z/I, SoftNav, ALTM-NAV and more)

• Graphics (Google Earth kml/kmz, dxf and georeferenced tiff)