Drone vs Drone a side by side comparison in a wind storm

Roy Rogers · Jan 30, 2020

MAvic_South_Oz · Jan 30, 2020

That's some pretty strong wind, both did pretty well really, you hardly see any camera movement, apart from the severe ups / down.
You flew both drones by the looks ??
If so, you did pretty well.

Do you think you can handle a third ?
If so, I'd like to see how the mini goes in same situ. (ha ha ?)

DeCoY · Jan 30, 2020

it would be a better example if they flew side by side on same camera

Prismatic · Jan 30, 2020

DeCoY said:
it would be a better example if they flew side by side on same camera

You're 100% right, but I don't recommend doing it. The disparate wind performance of the two drones could lead to a collision.

The problem with this video (thx, @Roy Rogers!) is that with both platforms dancing in 3-axes, neither camera yields much information. The apparent 3-space vector that the "target drone" takes at any moment has two component vectors: that of the target drone, and that of the camera platform. And there is almost no visual information from either camera to mentally sort it out. Another drone--acting as the filmER of two simultaneously visible filmEEs--would help, but there's no way to entirely avoid the issue with drones-filming-drones.

The real deal would be to mount a non-drone camera to something like a high bridge railing. Pick a day when the breeze is perpendicular to the bridge, and aim the camera upwind. Then fly the two drones side by side (don't use my drones for this

), far enough away from the structure to be outside its bow-shock and far enough apart to eliminate any chance of a collision. I bet that video would be revealing!

Roy Rogers · Jan 30, 2020

Prismatic said:
You're 100% right, but I don't recommend doing it. The disparate wind performance of the two drones could lead to a collision.

The problem with this video (thx, @Roy Rogers!) is that with both platforms dancing in 3-axes, neither camera yields much information. The apparent 3-space vector that the "target drone" takes at any moment has two component vectors: that of the target drone, and that of the camera platform. And there is almost no visual information from either camera to mentally sort it out. Another drone--acting as the filmER of two simultaneously visible filmEEs--would help, but there's no way to entirely avoid the issue with drones-filming-drones.

The real deal would be to mount a non-drone camera to something like a high bridge railing. Pick a day when the breeze is perpendicular to the bridge, and aim the camera upwind. Then fly the two drones side by side (don't use my drones for this ), far enough away from the structure to be outside its bow-shock and far enough apart to eliminate any chance of a collision. I bet that video would be revealing!

If I understand what your says correctly , You could do that by turning the Gimbels off . That would give you a accurate image of what the drone itself was doing in the wind .

The 3 axis gimbals held the images steady pretty much the whole video . The point of Drones filming Drones is to see how the drones act in heavy wind . 30° max tilt , and up / down drafts and so on . Being directly under them looking you couldn't tell if one got blown higher but looking and the screen you could see not only that it happened but which one it was .
The Mavic Air screen GPS would show movement from 1 - 5 feet but a few times it look like it moved twice that much . What was most interesting to me is the M2P would get push one way or the other but would automatically return position and the MA didn't really do that .

Anyway I don't really understand all the acronines you used but I got more raw footage from this and if it'll help ya your more then welcome to it.

Roy Rogers · Jan 30, 2020

MAvic_South_Oz said:
That's some pretty strong wind, both did pretty well really, you hardly see any camera movement, apart from the severe ups / down.
You flew both drones by the looks ??
If so, you did pretty well.

Do you think you can handle a third ?
If so, I'd like to see how the mini goes in same situ. (ha ha ?)

Glad you liked it man

. She's off Camera but the M2P is my Beautiful wife's
Controlling 3 drones 2 hands , wouldn't that be Juggling? I'll see if I can find the back ground music for Send in the Clowns and start filming ;-)

Prismatic · Jan 31, 2020

Roy Rogers said:
If I understand what your says correctly , You could do that by turning the Gimbels off . That would give you a accurate image of what the drone itself was doing in the wind .

The 3 axis gimbals held the images steady pretty much the whole video . The point of Drones filming Drones is to see how the drones act in heavy wind . 30° max tilt , and up / down drafts and so on . Being directly under them looking you couldn't tell if one got blown higher but looking and the screen you could see not only that it happened but which one it was .
The Mavic Air screen GPS would show movement from 1 - 5 feet but a few times it look like it moved twice that much . What was most interesting to me is the M2P would get push one way or the other but would automatically return position and the MA didn't really do that .

Anyway I don't really understand all the acronines you used but I got more raw footage from this and if it'll help ya your more then welcome to it.

I used no acronyms, which I assume you meant by "acronines". My attempt to emphasize the camera platform ("filmer") vs. the subject ("filmee") was maybe arcane and confusing. Sorry, my bad. ? You can read "filmER" as "the drone taking video" and "filmEE" as "the other drone", if that helps.

In any case, no: disabling the gimbals would not help one bit; it's entirely irrelevant.

If you don't see why that's true, or why it's absolutely crucial to have a stable camera platform--rather than two in-flight drones--to create a meaningful video on this subject, let's not belabor it.

I'm very sure you learned something doing this, mainly because you had them in sight from the ground as they did their aerial dance. But while it's amusing to watch, maybe, the video you presented offers no insight whatsoever into the relative wind performance of the two drones. Nobody can tell which drone's motion accounts for the relative movement seen by either camera. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

Skywalker · Jan 31, 2020

I flew my MA off my deck in a high wind to see how much it could take. It was bouncing around like your footage. Didn’t dare take it any higher than 20 ft in fear of the nearby trees. I did not expect the video to be rock solid as it was. I had to add “wind” to the file name so I’d know later why I had that footage. Very impressive.

Roy Rogers · Feb 1, 2020

Skywalker said:
I flew my MA off my deck in a high wind to see how much it could take. It was bouncing around like your footage. Didn’t dare take it any higher than 20 ft in fear of the nearby trees. I did not expect the video to be rock solid as it was. I had to add “wind” to the file name so I’d know later why I had that footage. Very impressive.

Yeah if its very windy I leave the mini back at the Hanger ;-) btw Im Glad you got something useful out of this post ! It was fun to make and a unique prospective