2020 Natural Selection Tour

The Team (L to R): Dalton Northrop, Scott Northrop, Pete Kelsey, Bobby Valentine . . . and nine drones.

Last week the first of three Natural Selection Tour snowboarding events took place at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Jackson WY. In case you missed it live you can watch the entire competition HERE on Red Bull TV.

In October 2020, a team I put together was asked to model the event course by the Emmy Award winning production company XR Media Group.

Bobby Valentine, Scott Northrop, Dalton Northrop, and I set to work with The Emesent Hovermap, a DJI M300 RTK, a WingtraOne, a couple of DJI M210s, and a couple of Mavic 2 Pros to capture both LiDAR and photogrammetry data of the site.

Scott & Dalton prep the WingtraOne while I chat with Air Traffic Control

Scott and Dalton (w/ Drone Tech Imaging) made quick work of the site and surrounding area with the Wingtra and Propeller AeroPoints. I had not seen the Wingtra in action before. I was very, very impressed. Scott and Dalton’s flythrough video of the Wingtra data is stunning.

The LiDAR flights were challenging as the site included a 1000′ of elevational change from the top to the bottom, restricted airspace due to JAC and Grand Teton National Park, trees, rocks, and I had no terrain following capability or collision avoidance capability as the M300 was unsupported by the Hovermap at the time. Nevertheless, the data was amazing.

A portion of the LiDAR data

We integrated the photogrammetry and the LiDAR using Bentley ContextCapture. This was my first exposure to ContextCapture as well and wow, for integrating photogrammetry and LiDAR together either locally or on the cloud this is very impressive software. We also used ESRI SiteScan (which uses the Pix4D engine) which really blew our minds. SiteScan’s terrain following and vertical face capture/modeling capability for the M210 provided stunning results.

Flying the Hovermap / M300 RTK at JHMR

Such a great project. The data can of course be used for just about anything including virtualizing the course, event planning / logistics, camera placement, safety / security, operations & maintenance, and even gaming / virtual reality. We look forward to working with XRMG and Red Bull again!

Thank you XRMG, all the good folks at JHMR, another amazing team: Bobby, Scott and Dalton . . . and another epic, technical tour de force: Emesent, Wingtra, DJI, Bentley, ESRI, Pix4D, and Red Bull!

One thought on “2020 Natural Selection Tour

  1. Awesome project and very challenging! Love how you used multiple workflows and equipment to accomplish your goal. Keep up the good work!
    Let me know if you ever need a likeminded PLS to help out with Ground Control and GPS Baseline processing. Cheers!

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