Virtual Litchi Mission

[Brojon]

You might have left out the part where it asked you if you trusted the source (mine did) since it was downloaded from the internet.
It was simply being careful and asking. There is no virus.

 

[HubBub]

@Brojon.

Sorry again. Indeed there is a problem with altitudes for you guys working in imperial units. I had not realised that Google Earth always requires altitudes to be input in metres even if you specify imperial units! Go figure!

I have made yet another update to VLM to handle this. You should use the same units in VLM as you do in Litchi. If you choose imperial units then VLM will convert the altitudes to metres to keep Google Earth happy!

In the case of your "School Tower Loop" mission, the area around waypoint 1 where I suppose you plan to take off (your Home Point) has an altitude of about 800 feet according to Google Earth. You should therefore put 800 into the Altitude Home Point box in VLM. Hopefully that will now match the Litchi 3DPath.

With regard to the 'weird yawing' that you see on your mission, I think this is because Litchi and Google handle the interpolation between waypoints differently. Between your waypoints 5-6, Litchi rotates the Heading clockwise because that is the shortest angular change between the two points. Google seems to prefer smoothness and says that since you are rotating anticlockwise between waypoints 2-3, waypoints 3-4 and also between 4-5, it should continue to do so between wayponts 5-6. I don't think it is possible to change this behaviour.

Google recommend a maximum heading difference of 30 degrees between waypoints for tours in Google Earth. ( see Placing views for a tour - KMLtouring) I have tried adding a couple of extra waypoints between 5 and 6 and it works much better.

Hope this helps.

 

[HubBub]

@Brojon.

Sorry again. Indeed there is a problem with altitudes for you guys working in imperial units. I had not realised that Google Earth always requires altitudes to be input in metres even if you specify imperial units! Go figure!

I have made yet another update to VLM to handle this. You should use the same units in VLM as you do in Litchi. If you choose imperial units then VLM will convert the altitudes to metres to keep Google Earth happy!

In the case of your "School Tower Loop" mission, the area around waypoint 1 where I suppose you plan to take off (your Home Point) has an altitude of about 800 feet according to Google Earth. You should therefore put 800 into the Altitude Home Point box in VLM. Hopefully that will now match the Litchi 3DPath.

With regard to the 'weird yawing' that you see on your mission, I think this is because Litchi and Google handle the interpolation between waypoints differently. Between your waypoints 5-6, Litchi rotates the Heading clockwise because that is the shortest angular change between the two points. Google seems to prefer smoothness and says that since you are rotating anticlockwise between waypoints 2-3, waypoints 3-4 and also between 4-5, it should continue to do so between wayponts 5-6. I don't think it is possible to change this behaviour.

Google recommend a maximum heading difference of 30 degrees between waypoints for tours in Google Earth. ( see Placing views for a tour - KMLtouring) I have tried adding a couple of extra waypoints between 5 and 6 and it works much better.

Hope this helps.

WIndows 10 defender (up to date) identifies the zip file as Trojan:Win32/Fuerboos.A!cl. Malwarebytes is ok with it.

Anyone else see this?

 

[namirda]

Yes - definitely not a virus!!! I wouldn't even know how to start writing one of those......!!

Here is an updated version of VLM which I have been working on. It doesn't have any viruses either but does have the following updates/changes :

1) VLM now tries to get the elevation of the first waypoint from Google Earth and uses that as the initial value for the Home Point Elevation. You can still update it as required but this initial value should generally be OK so long as your Home Point (usually take-off location) as approximately the same altitude as the first waypoint. If Google refuses to cooperate then you may still have to input the values by hand.

2) In earlier versions, the virtual mission was flown along the original waypoint path with Google Earth providing the smoothing. However, the Google Earth smoothing is completely different to the Litchi smoothing and that was the source of some problems. Google Earth tries to "hit" all the waypoints by flying a smoothed route passing through all the waypoints. Litchi on the other hand never hits any of the waypoints if there is any curve applied - instead it generates a smooth quadratic Bezier curve near each waypoint and flies that instead. So I had to brush up on my schoolboy algebra from 40 years ago and generate some Bezier curves to match those from Litchi. VLM now has Google Earth fly this smoothed path and the result is much improved. You can compare the smoothed path from VLM with that coming from Litchi in their KLM 3DPath and I think you will find they are pretty much the same.

3) I have introduced a layer in Google Earth which can plot labels on the original waypoints if required. Somebody was asking for this as a way to monitor progress through the virtual mission. I hope it is helpful - you can just switch it off if you don't like it.

4) I have made some changes to the way FOV is calculated. The input FOV should still be the diagonal FOV as provided by DJI. However, this is now converted to Horizontal FOV for use by Google Earth. This results in a slightly narrower FOV for the virtual mission which more accurately reflects the real FOV of the drone.

 

[HubBub]

Yes - definitely not a virus!!! I wouldn't even know how to start writing one of those......!!

Here is an updated version of VLM which I have been working on. It doesn't have any viruses either but does have the following updates/changes :

1) VLM now tries to get the elevation of the first waypoint from Google Earth and uses that as the initial value for the Home Point Elevation. You can still update it as required but this initial value should generally be OK so long as your Home Point (usually take-off location) as approximately the same altitude as the first waypoint. If Google refuses to cooperate then you may still have to input the values by hand.

2) In earlier versions, the virtual mission was flown along the original waypoint path with Google Earth providing the smoothing. However, the Google Earth smoothing is completely different to the Litchi smoothing and that was the source of some problems. Google Earth tries to "hit" all the waypoints by flying a smoothed route passing through all the waypoints. Litchi on the other hand never hits any of the waypoints if there is any curve applied - instead it generates a smooth quadratic Bezier curve near each waypoint and flies that instead. So I had to brush up on my schoolboy algebra from 40 years ago and generate some Bezier curves to match those from Litchi. VLM now has Google Earth fly this smoothed path and the result is much improved. You can compare the smoothed path from VLM with that coming from Litchi in their KLM 3DPath and I think you will find they are pretty much the same.

3) I have introduced a layer in Google Earth which can plot labels on the original waypoints if required. Somebody was asking for this as a way to monitor progress through the virtual mission. I hope it is helpful - you can just switch it off if you don't like it.

4) I have made some changes to the way FOV is calculated. The input FOV should still be the diagonal FOV as provided by DJI. However, this is now converted to Horizontal FOV for use by Google Earth. This results in a slightly narrower FOV for the virtual mission which more accurately reflects the real FOV of the drone.

I was sure it was a false positive but I simply wanted to see if other had reported a similar problem.

I will give 1.0.3 a try.

Thanks for your time.

 

[marklyn]

Yes, thanks for the updates and continued upgrade of a very nice tool. It is very much appreciated!

*update* the flight seems to follow the path much more precise now. GREAT JOB!

 

[Brojon]

Yes - definitely not a virus!!! I wouldn't even know how to start writing one of those......!!

Here is an updated version of VLM which I have been working on. It doesn't have any viruses either but does have the following updates/changes :

My goodness you've been busy!
Rock on!

 

[53-63-6f-74-74]

I downloaded your latest zip file to try it out. I can't seem to get the way-point headings to anything other than north when opened in GE. Am I missing something? This would be a great tool if I could just get the headings to transfer properly.

EDIT: If using the "Toward Next Way-point" option in Mission Hub, the CSV file exported from Litchi does not contain way-point headings. You must use a custom heading on each one.

 

[Brojon]

I was sure it was a false positive but I simply wanted to see if other had reported a similar problem.

I will give 1.0.3 a try.

Thanks for your time.

This last one Windows is absolutely adamant that it has a virus and refuses to allow the program to exist.
Won't even quarantine - immediately removes the archive with no option to ignore.
Is there any possibility that you have a virus that could be trying to spread?

 

[FireFlyer451]

Good afternoon,

I am getting this error when dragging the CSV file to my watched folder. And the 'Update GE' button never becomes enabled. I am using Imperial values.



Any suggestions? Thanks

 

[namirda]

I downloaded your latest zip file to try it out. I can't seem to get the way-point headings to anything other than north when opened in GE. Am I missing something? This would be a great tool if I could just get the headings to transfer properly.

EDIT: If using the "Toward Next Way-point" option in Mission Hub, the CSV file exported from Litchi does not contain way-point headings. You must use a custom heading on each one.

That is indeed true. I've just tried it to confirm and it seems that if you use the TNW option then Litchi always outputs a heading of North (zero). Isn't this a bug in Litchi? Perhaps I should grumble to them?

 

[namirda]

Good afternoon,

I am getting this error when dragging the CSV file to my watched folder. And the 'Update GE' button never becomes enabled. I am using Imperial values.

View attachment 27695

Any suggestions? Thanks

You must be flying somewhere very high!! I suspect that value of 5278 is the elevation of your first way point according to Google. I have put a limit of 5000' for the elevation - obviously too low. I will double that limit in the next release which should be enough unless you live in Tibet?

In the meantime, you can get going by selecting "Metric" as units in your VLM setup page. That will convert your elevation to metres before trying to display it - should get around the problem. Sorry about that.

 

[FireFlyer451]

Thanks. Yes I am in Colorado and planning flights that start around 6500' and go up from there.

 

[namirda]

This last one Windows is absolutely adamant that it has a virus and refuses to allow the program to exist.
Won't even quarantine - immediately removes the archive with no option to ignore.
Is there any possibility that you have a virus that could be trying to spread?

I uploaded VLM version1.0.3 to virus total and here is the result :

VirusTotal

it looks clean to me. Really not sure what else I can do??

 

[marklyn]

That is indeed true. I've just tried it to confirm and it seems that if you use the TNW option then Litchi always outputs a heading of North (zero). Isn't this a bug in Litchi? Perhaps I should grumble to them?

Yes, and there is an odd behavior in Litchi somewhat related to this. When you create a mission all points (by default) point N (0 degrees), if you drop a POI anywhere they all point to it, every time. If you change the waypoints to *anything* other than 0 (even 1 or 359 degrees) this behavior doesn't happen. Sorry, don't want to get off subject, off track, but I thought I'd point out that anomaly and wonder if there is some relation.

 

[53-63-6f-74-74]

That is indeed true. I've just tried it to confirm and it seems that if you use the TNW option then Litchi always outputs a heading of North (zero). Isn't this a bug in Litchi? Perhaps I should grumble to them?

I'm not sure I'd call it a 'bug'. It's just the way it works. I might call it more of a 'missing feature'. Regardless, your program is quite useful. Most of my missions are 15-25 points, so it takes just a minute or two to manually change the way-point azimuths and export another CSV. I find the way-point labels to be a great feature; I find it most useful to turn off the actual paths in GE and just leave way-points on when testing the virtual mission.

 

[Brojon]

Finally got it to download on another system and then it runs fine.
No idea why Defender got a bug up its tush about the archive.
Big thumbs up on the smoothed path - I didn't see anything indicating the FOV conversion so I assume the 78 is specified then adjusted?
If I may suggest a few presets in radio buttons or dropdown combo with a manual option for user input. Should be a do-able given Dji publishes the FOV for all it's birds. Exception would be the Inspires and up that can change lenses.
Litchi just took a quantum jump in usefulness thanks to you. I feel much more confident in the mission paths with the ability to actually fly it.

 

[wombat]

I am no very tech minded but I do fly the Mavic and have some CSV files, how do I used this Virtual Litchi Mission 1.3 ?

Can I fly the mission or does it show the height and terrain of the flight ?

 

[HubBub]

I am no very tech minded but I do fly the Mavic and have some CSV files, how do I used this Virtual Litchi Mission 1.3 ?

Can I fly the mission or does it show the height and terrain of the flight ?

Just read message 16 where your will get a link to a PC app that will allow you to embed the CSV file in Google Earth and simulate flying the mission there.

 

[wombat]

thanks HubBub, going to post 16 now