Can't get FPV to work

[SamHir]

So I have had my Mavic 2 Pro for a few months now and have figured out a lot of quirks except for one: I cannot get FPV mode to work at all. Regardless of whether I am in sport or position mode, lateral movements are still stabilized as in Follow mode. I contacted DJI and they recommended re-calibrating the IMU, which I did and the readings look fine after as far as I can tell (all green, .0001 or whatever the lowest numbers are). I also calibrated the gimbal after the IMU as directed by them. With the recent firmware upgrade, I redid those calibrations as well and still nothing.

Am I missing something obvious like unlocking something in a different menu? As far as I can tell, my M2P is working flawlessly in all other aspects except for this one thing and I don't quite care enough about it to consider sending it back to DJI.

 

[brettbrandon]

I dont think it is available on the M2's.
No fixed wing mode on Mavic 2 Pro

 

[Mike4884]

He is not talking about fixed wing mode.... this is actually a flight mode on the original mavic pro. He means the setting fpv mode in gimbal settings

 

[SamHir]

He is not talking about fixed wing mode.... this is actually a flight mode on the original mavic pro. He means the setting fpv mode in gimbal settings

Exactly. It does seem possible both from the fact that the button is there to switch to it and from what i see in this video:

 

[brettbrandon]

Sorry, my bad. I just looked in the app and see what you are talking about. Never tried it or even knew it was there...

 

[Neil Reid]

Hmmm....perhaps I need to try this on my MP. FPV looks like a ton of fun.

 

[SamHir]

Resolved.

TLDR: It was working all along, but I was thinking wrong about the way that it was supposed to work. Specifically, I had to stop thinking of the drone as flying like a plane.

Finally figured it out. The clue came when I turned on my drone on without flying and just picked it up with my hands using FPV mode. When I banked the drone left and right, the camera did dip as I was expecting it to do while flying. So I asked myself, what am I missing here?

The answer was that while the gimble stabilization does get turned off, the way the drone flies is still the same. That is, when I turn my drone while moving forward, it doesn't actually bank left or right, it just changes direction like a helicopter, not like a plane which banks left and right. Once I understood that, I tried banking left and right using the right stick "strafe" and lo and behold... the horizon moved accordingly.

Of course this means that if I want to make it look like I'm banking while turning direction (as opposed to just strafing left and right) I have to both strafe with the right stick AND turn with the left stick. Once I tried that it was exactly what I was expecting FPV to look like.

Anyway, hope this is helpful to anyone else that wasn't sure how this was supposed to look/work. Of course, if someone else has a different experience, I'd love to hear how it works on your Mavic, but this all makes sense, so I think I'm going to consider it resolved for now...

Edit: a few typos

 

[DanMan32]

Indeed when you yaw (left/right on left stick) you are effectively operating what would be the rudder on a fixed wing aircraft. In such a case, there's no roll in our quads or in a fixed wing.
When you use the left/right on the right stick, then you are banking/rolling as if using the ailerons on a fixed wing. In a fixed wing though, you're always moving forward so a bank/roll appears like a turn. In our quads though, we can bank/roll without forward movement, so it doesn't appear as a turn like it does with a yaw but rather a slip side to side.
It's interesting to do coordinated turns using both sticks and in FPV mode. I've done that with my P3A.

 

[SamHir]

Indeed when you yaw (left/right on left stick) you are effectively operating what would be the rudder on a fixed wing aircraft. In such a case, there's no roll in our quads or in a fixed wing.
When you use the left/right on the right stick, then you are banking/rolling as if using the ailerons on a fixed wing. In a fixed wing though, you're always moving forward so a bank/roll appears like a turn. In our quads though, we can bank/roll without forward movement, so it doesn't appear as a turn like it does with a yaw but rather a slip side to side.
It's interesting to do coordinated turns using both sticks and in FPV mode. I've done that with my P3A.

Exactly! Now that I get it, it makes perfect sense... I think my only complaint is that after months of searching I've never seen it explained like this. Amusingly enough, it never occurred to me to try to strafe left/right in all my previous attempts. Anyway, cleared that up and now feel a whole lot better knowing that there wasn't something wrong with my drone...

 

[Gryphon962]

....

The answer was that while the gimble stabilization does get turned off, the way the drone flies is still the same. That is, when I turn my drone while moving forward, it doesn't actually bank left or right, it just changes direction like a helicopter, not like a plane which banks left and right. Once I understood that, I tried banking left and right using the right stick "strafe" and lo and behold... the horizon moved accordingly.

.....

Helicopters most certainly do bank while turning left / right.

 

[DanMan32]

Not when only the tail rotor is used to make the turn. That's the equivalent of a rudder.

 

[Gryphon962]

Not when only the tail rotor is used to make the turn. That's the equivalent of a rudder.

No license-holding helicopter pilot turns a helicopter by pedal only if there is any significant airspeed. Sideslip feels horrible to humans. Aircraft are same.

 

[DanMan32]

Agree, pilots on manned aircraft would use coordinated turns. But we're talking about UAS quad copters where just using yaw (rudder) is common, and I was making the analogy in its movement. Yaw/rudder only turns don't experience any roll and it's the roll that the gimbal reacts to.