Would anyone else find it useful to have Realtime Ground to Altitude data while flying?
Most of my flights take place in the hill or mountains. It is hard to gauge your altitude relevant to the ground when flying in mixed terrain. Especially when flying over a valley, down into a valley from an elevated location or up a hill or mountain.
It is surprising that DJI does not include such a feature as elevation is included in almost all raw GPS data derived from mapping. It is understood that this would not applicable without a cellular signal or caching the map before flying.
With this information pilots would have better accuracy and could increase compliance with the FAA ground altitude regulations for unmanned aircraft.
At this point, all I can do postflight is use the equation (takeoff location elevation + altitude) - the elevation from GPS coordinates. I have used Here Technologies to plot my above ground altitude to better refine my visual flying above the ground. Plotting every 5 seconds gives me a much better perspective of height above the ground when I fly in the same area again.
I wrote a scrapper for the downloaded flight data GPS coordinates and altitude using the Home Point as the base elevation then compare that GPS elevation. Then I return this as a nested JSON array [[time, coordinates and hight]] and import it to Here Maps with a sequential line based on time and tags for the altitude.
The only good thing so far using this method is I have never had a negative or zero ground altitude during a flight.
Most of my flights take place in the hill or mountains. It is hard to gauge your altitude relevant to the ground when flying in mixed terrain. Especially when flying over a valley, down into a valley from an elevated location or up a hill or mountain.
It is surprising that DJI does not include such a feature as elevation is included in almost all raw GPS data derived from mapping. It is understood that this would not applicable without a cellular signal or caching the map before flying.
With this information pilots would have better accuracy and could increase compliance with the FAA ground altitude regulations for unmanned aircraft.
At this point, all I can do postflight is use the equation (takeoff location elevation + altitude) - the elevation from GPS coordinates. I have used Here Technologies to plot my above ground altitude to better refine my visual flying above the ground. Plotting every 5 seconds gives me a much better perspective of height above the ground when I fly in the same area again.
I wrote a scrapper for the downloaded flight data GPS coordinates and altitude using the Home Point as the base elevation then compare that GPS elevation. Then I return this as a nested JSON array [[time, coordinates and hight]] and import it to Here Maps with a sequential line based on time and tags for the altitude.
The only good thing so far using this method is I have never had a negative or zero ground altitude during a flight.