Is Mavic Air Active Track really that useless?

[thebigbaddan]

Probably best to film OTHERS with your mavic...

 

[Ray&Paula]

I've seen some video's while using Active Track Trace mode circling a moving boat. Looked pretty awesome...... No obstacles to worry about as well.

 

[Stingray 101]

I've seen some video's while using Active Track Trace mode circling a moving boat. Looked pretty awesome...... No obstacles to worry about as well.

I've used it for boats, people, tractors and dogs. Will try and upload a video later.

 

[charlas]

I've used the Litchi active tracking to follow a friend on a bike, worked OK, not perfect, but usable shots. But honestly, the 'intelligent' modes are just nice to have's as the computational power to decipher moving objects, against a moving background when light is changing (as direction of the quad changes) and all the other things like angle to the object (so perspective shift) and stuff, and it has to do that all in realtime, whilst maintaining a stable flight and checking it's surroundings to try avoid things, anyhow the CPU/GPU/Computational requirements are beyond a 1000ueuro/usd/gbp lightweight drone at the moment. Sacrifice of features has to be made somewhere, and this is where. As software get's better, and hardware gets cheaper they will get better though.

As for software, I'm sure with Firmware/DJI Go4 updates things will get better, buyt remember it all has to be processed on the drone itself, as it cannot guarantee connection to the controller, and even at the best connection state, the lag involved for the controller/phone to make decisions that could be 'life/death' of the aircraft would be too slow to help it out of trouble.

Saying that it would be nice if DJI sold a 'tether' device (watch, arm strap etc) so it could be a little more autonomous

 

[Soxer123]

I agree with what has been said. In order to do real follow you during MTB, you might need to change to a Skydio R1 drone. This is however specialized on just follow mode, so hence all other nice stuff/features that comes with your Mavic are lost.

Have a look at this example (Skydio R1):

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Got to be honest, considering the number of trees and some of those "tunnels" I was pretty impressed.

 

[webvan]

I recently found that SmartCapture is probably the way to go with the AIR as it WILL track you going downhill AND it has "dynamic home point" by design and will hover if it loses you. You can also be connected to the RC to take over if something happens. The only real downside is that you're limited to 7 meters maximum distance (or a bit more if it's trying to catch up).

Oh and if you're connected with the app you can choose Profile or Trace for tracking.

 

[stormense8]

Yes is useless

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[webvan]

I've found that the best tracking mode with the Air was with SmartCapture. It goes up and down, it has dynamic home point (only way to have it on the Air) and therefore no distance limit, you don't need to have your phone on and in case of a problem you can always fire up the RC to bring it back.