feature request, Fixed orientation fly mode

PIX4Dcapture PIX4Dcapture Questions/Troubleshooting
1

Pix4DCapture always flies the drone forward. Which is usually a good idea, especially because some drones have collision avoidance at front.

 

But, in some specific cases this is not the best solution:

 

Let’s consider a situation where we’re flying in quite high wind (just please don’t tell me I shouldn’t fly in wind, that’s not a solution).

So in high wind, the drone flies at higher angle than normally (at least in one direction). In Phantom series drones, this can cause part of the landing gear to be visible within picture frame.

The part covered by landing gear can be masked (and this is how I’m handling this now), but it would be much more convenient to not have the landing gear visible at all. Masking 1000+ images always gets me in bad mood (and takes time).

The landing gear is only visible on the left part of the photo (due to gimbal construction, it is very hard to make it visible on the right). This means I could easily save myself a lot of work by flying with drone turned right to the wind or back to the wind.

So, if there was an option to fly in Pix4DCapture without turning the drone, at fixed yaw - I would be able to get photos without landing gear on them.

 

2

Hi Tomasz,

Thank you for the suggestion.

There is an annotation tool implemented in Pix4D Desktop that could help you remove the landing gear more efficiently. Try to use the  Global Mask: The pixels annotated are propagated to all the images. All these pixels are not used for processing. Suitable for a consistent obstacle on all the images, e.g. the foot of the drone. For more information: 210749586.

Regards,

3

Thank you; that is a valid solution if the landing gear would be visible in all photos consistently.

But for Phantom series, as for most drones, the gimbal moves independently of landing hear. I would have to mask considerable part of the photo to keep all images clean.

See attached examples. Less than 30% of all photos were affected by the landing gear visible on the left.

Altizure is an example app which flies without changing aircraft direction (but it lacks a lot of other features, so I’m sticking to Pix4DCapture.

 

 

 

4

I too would like to see this feature for different reasons.  I capture long linear facades.  Having the drone fly with the yaw set to 90 degrees would greatly aid in my data collection.