Tilted horizon at sideways flight - fixed or not

[The Mavic Pro]

Has the tilted horizon problem when flying sideways been fjxed?

I had teo brand new Mavic's that both had the same problem, even when there was no wind.
I tried everything, gimbal cal, IMU cal, updated firmware, downgraded firmware and reset the craft in the software, etc. But nothing helped.

I know this question has been asked before, by me as well. But i wanted to know the current situation.

Im not sure which firmwares my Mavic's had, but it was around January 2017.

I was unfortunately forced to return the Mavic's since they could not be used to make videos at all.
I really would have wanted to keep the Mavic but that was not possible with the heavy tilting going on.

So whats the status of this problem now a half year later.
Has this problem been fixed through a firmware update or is there some other solution to this problem?
Because i cant image that both my two Mavic's was faulty.

 

[Pathogen]

Not sure if its what you mean, but I climbed vertical for half a minute, and within that climb I strafed to the left, and the footage does lean left at start of strafe portion, and straightens out as strafing ends.

EDIT: (0800) and I probably should note the amount of lean, so I'm going to say maybe 5 or 10 degrees.

 

[fnf]

I get a straight horizon the majority of the time if I keep the aircraft still in the air (regardless of the wind conditions). Turning or going sideways do occasionally make the horizon tilted by perhaps 1-2 degrees i.e., not noticeable unless you have a clear horizon for reference. It then returns to horizon in 5-10 seconds.

The only thing you should need to calibrate is the gimbal. IMU/compass calibration will have no effect. You should ensure that you calibrate the gimbal on an absolutely level surface on both 2D axes (looking forward and looking sideway). I use a pitch gauge for this.

With this method, I can leave the gimbal adjustment at 0 degrees.

 

[The Mavic Pro]

Yes i have done all the different calibrations on a level surface.

Well i got a straight horizon when the craft was still in the air, but as soon as i started flying sideways the horizon tilted and it only leveled out after the craft stopped moving, or after about 5 seconds. The tilting occurred at the exact moment the craft started to move sideways from a stand still.
This was more noticeable in windy conditions but it even happened when there were no wind to speak about.
And the tilting was heavy enough that it ruined the video recordings. I mean i must be able to fly sideways while I'm recording without tilting occurring.

So is this considered normal on the Mavic pro or what? Maybe its the smaller gimbal that can't withstand winds as good as the little bigger phantom and Inspire 1 gimbals?

 

[fnf]

It's not a physical limitation of the gimbal. The gimbal uses a pair of gyroscope & accelerometer to know its orientation in space. I expect that all current consumer-grade gyroscopes will behave the same. What you've been seeing is called 'bias' as the gyroscope's output is inherently noisy, over time the integration of all the readings gets shifted to non-0.

The accelerometer helps correct the gyroscope's bias when the aircraft has little to no movements but it has the same limitations as the gyroscope when the aircraft is moving i.e., integrated readings from the accelerometer will be shifted to non-0.

I make peace with this limitation by rotating the videos in post-production if necessary. Looking through my videos, though, it hasn't been a real issue. As an example, this is typically the maximum tilt that the Mavic gives me when moving sideway (it was focusing on the building in the center whilst circling around it). I think the tilt in this video is less than 1 degree, still noticable but not significant.

 

[The Mavic Pro]

It's not a physical limitation of the gimbal. The gimbal uses a pair of gyroscope & accelerometer to know its orientation in space. I expect that all current consumer-grade gyroscopes will behave the same. What you've been seeing is called 'bias' as the gyroscope's output is inherently noisy, over time the integration of all the readings gets shifted to non-0.

The accelerometer helps correct the gyroscope's bias when the aircraft has little to no movements but it has the same limitations as the gyroscope when the aircraft is moving i.e., integrated readings from the accelerometer will be shifted to non-0.

I make peace with this limitation by rotating the videos in post-production if necessary. Looking through my videos, though, it hasn't been a real issue. As an example, this is typically the maximum tilt that the Mavic gives me when moving sideway (it was focusing on the building in the center whilst circling around it). I think the tilt in this video is less than 1 degree, still noticable but not significant.

Thanks for your answer, interesting.
On your picture the tilting is nothing compared to what both my Mavic´s had, if mine had like yours i think i should have kept the Mavic´s, but mine was horrible.

And I'm not so sure this is considered normal since it only happened on my Mavic´s that i owned, i didn't have that problem on my Phantoms 2/3 or my Inspire 1, and not on the Zenmuse H3-3D either? So it seems it has something to do with the Mavic Pro?

 

[fnf]

The tilting is not very smooth to me, but the amount of tilt otherwise looks normal. Due to the inherent noise in the gyroscope & accelerometer, some amount of integration time is required which makes the gimbal's correction lags behind the actual camera's tilt. A shorter integration time makes the gimbal more responsive to these changes (i.e., it wouldn't take as long as 5 seconds to return to horizontal but 1-2 seconds), however it will make the gimbal more prone to micro jutters at the same time due to the noisy inputs.

The Mavic is my first DJI drone so I'm not sure if the Phantom/Inspire have the same issue. However given what I've seen in a few other gimbals and the complains regarding the horizon tilts for Inspire/Phantom series, I would be surprised if they do not have the same issue.

The trick to keep the tilted horizon in check is to do gentle movements and speed up in post if necessary. It's what I do anyway as I often can't anticipate how fast I'd want the footage to play during recording.

To clarify, I do have a (very slightly) lesser amount of tilting as in your video when moving sideway at full left/right throttle, however I work around this by not moving/turning at the maximum speed.

 

[Chrizk0]

You guys have the slightest to the least of the problems. I have all those issues said above with my gimbal (1.0+ gimbal roll for straight horizon) and the worst part of it is the panning, when I pan no matter how slow or fast I turn it tilts up to or more than 45 degrees each side. It is very annoying and I want to turn it in for a replacement but I don't want to wait a long time since summer is almost done and I'll be busy again. Hearing all the complaints with the customer service now. But I guess it's what I got to do, hoping to just turn in the unit not anything else that was in the combo.

 

[Jeff7577]

You guys have the slightest to the least of the problems. I have all those issues said above with my gimbal (1.0+ gimbal roll for straight horizon) and the worst part of it is the panning, when I pan no matter how slow or fast I turn it tilts up to or more than 45 degrees each side. It is very annoying and I want to turn it in for a replacement but I don't want to wait a long time since summer is almost done and I'll be busy again. Hearing all the complaints with the customer service now. But I guess it's what I got to do, hoping to just turn in the unit not anything else that was in the combo.

You have your gimbal set to FPV mode. For everyone else, this is why there is a gimbal roll adjustment.

 

[Chrizk0]

You have your gimbal set to FPV mode. For everyone else, this is why there is a gimbal roll adjustment.

Nope. I was aware of that. I even calibrated everything. I made sure if everything first. It's been an obvious problem since I received it

 

[The Mavic Pro]

You have your gimbal set to FPV mode. For everyone else, this is why there is a gimbal roll adjustment.

I don't think this issue is helped by the gimbal roll setting, as far as i have understood the gimbal roll setting only adjusts your gimbal roll to a fixed position.
The problem in this thread is about a perfectly leveled horizon when hovering which turns into a tilted horizon when one starts to fly sideways, and then when the craft comes to a stand still the horizon levels out again.

The tilting is not very smooth to me, but the amount of tilt otherwise looks normal. Due to the inherent noise in the gyroscope & accelerometer, some amount of integration time is required which makes the gimbal's correction lags behind the actual camera's tilt. A shorter integration time makes the gimbal more responsive to these changes (i.e., it wouldn't take as long as 5 seconds to return to horizontal but 1-2 seconds), however it will make the gimbal more prone to micro jutters at the same time due to the noisy inputs.

The Mavic is my first DJI drone so I'm not sure if the Phantom/Inspire have the same issue. However given what I've seen in a few other gimbals and the complains regarding the horizon tilts for Inspire/Phantom series, I would be surprised if they do not have the same issue.

The trick to keep the tilted horizon in check is to do gentle movements and speed up in post if necessary. It's what I do anyway as I often can't anticipate how fast I'd want the footage to play during recording.

To clarify, I do have a (very slightly) lesser amount of tilting as in your video when moving sideway at full left/right throttle, however I work around this by not moving/turning at the maximum speed.

Actually in this particular video the problem is not so bad, often the problem was even worse than in this video. One other issue on the first Mavic Pro was also problems at Yaw.

Well if my earlier drones had this problem it must had been very subtle since i didn't notice this problem on my other drones.

Actually the new inspire 1 X3 gimbal which got exchanged since the old one had a sensor problem has a bit of this problem as well, but the first x3 camera/gimbal hadn't any or had a very small amount of this tilt issue to the point i never noticed it.

 

[rickf777]

DOES ANYONE HAVE A MAVIC PRO THAT DOESN"T TILT WHEN FLYING SIDEWAYS ???

 

[TrickMcKaha]

My new Mavic Alpine White, when flying sideways, does not noticeably show a tilted horizon when viewed through the goggles RE edition. I have the goggles in Head Tracking Gimbal mode, so unless I tilt my head, the image is stable going forward or sideways. I have not updated the Mavic firmware.

 

[Hollow Dog]

There are adjustment that can be made in the gimbal parameters for the motor speed.
I don't know if they would help but I suspect changing them you may see a difference in reaction time of the gimbal correction.

 

[Pipes101]

DOES ANYONE HAVE A MAVIC PRO THAT DOESN"T TILT WHEN FLYING SIDEWAYS ???

I did until I broke my gimbal vibrating mount last week! I had the perfect mavic no problems whatsoever and Now I’m googling about this **** tilted horizon.

 

[Pipes101]

There are adjustment that can be made in the gimbal parameters for the motor speed.
I don't know if they would help but I suspect changing them you may see a difference in reaction time of the gimbal correction.

Speak more about this. If I pan it tilts and takes forever to level out after I stop. What are the specific parameters to tweak?

 

[Bungle]

This is an issue for me, I found a clip of the issue and here it is:

Now is this just that I need to be far more gentle? Because it feels like the camera is not on a 3rd axis.