System requirements
DroneField processes aerial imagery entirely locally — so the performance of your machine matters. The figures below are sized for a 30-hectare, ~200-image project.
From v26.1 onwards, DroneField is available on all three platforms (macOS, Windows, Linux) with identical features.
General minimum / recommended
Section titled “General minimum / recommended”| Component | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| RAM | 8 GB | 16 GB (for 300+ image projects); 24–32 GB for large projects |
| CPU | Intel 8th gen (Coffee Lake, 2017) / AMD Ryzen 2000+ — AVX2 required | Intel 11th gen / AMD Ryzen 5000+ or newer |
| CPU cores | 4 cores / 8 threads | 6 cores / 12 threads (or more) |
| GPU | Vulkan 1.2 compatible, 2 GB VRAM | Vulkan 1.3, 4 GB+ VRAM |
| Storage | SSD, 20 GB free | NVMe SSD, 50 GB+ |
The Vulkan 1.2 driver is the hard requirement, not the age of the GPU hardware — every GPU driver from 2018 onwards supports it.
Concrete GPU minimums
Section titled “Concrete GPU minimums”- NVIDIA: GTX 1050 (Pascal, 2016) or newer
- AMD: RX 460 (Polaris, 2016) or newer
- Intel iGPU: UHD Graphics 620 (8th gen Core, 2017) or newer — works but 2–3× slower than a dedicated GPU
| Category | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| OS | macOS 13 (Ventura) | macOS 14 (Sonoma) or newer |
| Processor | Apple Silicon M1 | Apple Silicon M3 Pro / M4 / M4 Pro |
| Memory | 8 GB | 16–24 GB for large projects |
| Storage | 50 GB free SSD | 200 GB+ NVMe SSD |
| GPU | Integrated (Metal support required) | Apple Silicon GPU with 14+ cores |
DroneField is Apple Silicon native — Intel Macs are not supported.
Windows
Section titled “Windows”| Category | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| OS | Windows 10 v1809 (2018) — start of .NET 10 LTS support | Windows 11 22H2 or newer |
| Memory | 8 GB | 24–32 GB |
| Storage | NVMe SSD, 20 GB free | NVMe SSD, 100 GB+ |
| GPU | Vulkan 1.2 driver + GPU (see above) | NVIDIA RTX 3060 / 4060+ or AMD Radeon equivalent |
| Category | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| Distribution | Ubuntu 20.04 LTS / Debian 11 / Fedora 36 / RHEL 8 — glibc 2.31+ | Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or newer |
| Memory | 8 GB | 24–32 GB |
| Storage | SSD, 20 GB free | NVMe SSD, 100 GB+ |
| GPU | Vulkan 1.2 driver (see above) | NVIDIA RTX dedicated or AMD Radeon |
Linux prerequisites on the end-user machine:
libvulkan1+ GPU driver:- NVIDIA: proprietary driver (from your distribution’s package manager)
- AMD / Intel:
mesa-vulkan-drivers
A one-liner install on modern desktop distributions:
# Ubuntu / Debian:sudo apt install libvulkan1 mesa-vulkan-drivers
# Fedora:sudo dnf install vulkan-loader mesa-vulkan-driversNetwork
Section titled “Network”DroneField is largely offline-capable: on previously imported imagery the processing pipeline (image alignment, optimisation, mosaicking, NDVI) runs entirely offline. Internet is needed for:
- Sign-in and the first verification of your subscription
- Downloading version updates
- Displaying the map basemap (OpenStreetMap, ESRI World Imagery, Apple Maps)
- Device heartbeat — a small ping every 15 minutes
Your licence stays valid offline for about 30 days via a token cached in the local Keychain — short field trips without internet will not lock you out.
Storage estimate per project
Section titled “Storage estimate per project”| Project size | Original images | Intermediate files | Outputs |
|---|---|---|---|
| ~50 RGB images, 5 ha | ~2 GB | ~3 GB | ~500 MB |
| ~200 RGB images, 30 ha | ~8 GB | ~15 GB | ~2 GB |
| ~200 multispectral | ~12 GB | ~25 GB | ~3 GB |
| ~500 images, 100 ha | ~25 GB | ~40 GB | ~5 GB |
Intermediate files can be deleted after processing if you need to reclaim space — the final outputs (orthomosaic, DSM, NDVI, report) remain.