Drone-Powered Event Planning for Louisville's Largest Music Festival
The Forecastle Festival draws tens of thousands of music fans to Louisville's Waterfront Park each year. To support event continuity and streamline year-over-year planning, VizionAir captured a high-resolution 3D digital twin of the entire festival grounds using drone photogrammetry.
This interactive model preserves the complete layout of stages, vendor areas, walkways, and infrastructure—replacing memory and rough sketches with a precise, explorable digital record. Event managers can reference exact positioning for setup, sponsors can visualize activation spaces, and marketing teams gain an immersive asset for fan engagement.
"Event continuity, year after year, is very important to most event managers. A high-resolution 3D model of the event created by a drone makes things much easier for the following year. A year is a long time, so mapping helps replace memory in a business scenario like this."
— Drew Duffin, VizionAir FounderBeyond planning, the digital twin serves as a powerful marketing tool. Festival-goers can take a virtual tour of the venue before buying tickets, reliving the experience or exploring what's to come. The VR-compatible model works on desktop, mobile, and headsets—bringing Louisville's premier music festival to audiences anywhere in the world.
How We Captured It
VizionAir deployed a DJI Inspire 2 with an X5S camera to capture 681 aerial images across nadir grid patterns and seven oblique orbital flights. The imagery was processed using Pix4D photogrammetry software to generate a dense point cloud, then refined into a photorealistic textured mesh. Manual tie points were added in high-exposure and shadow areas to ensure accuracy across the entire venue.