A new version of VLM (V2.5.0) is now available for download – the link can be found in the first post of this thread.
The differences from V2.4.0 are minor but interesting!
A long time user of VLM (
@Tajino) noticed recently that the behaviour of his drone around POIs was inconsistent – he found that in some missions the drone pointed very precisely at the POI but in other missions the heading ‘wandered’ off the POI by a considerable margin.
In contrast the virtual mission produced by VLM focused well on the POI in all cases.
@Tajino followed this up with Litchi and learned something new about how they handle WPs and POIs in different circumstances. - at least it was new to me!
It seems that the way Litchi handle POIs depends on the mission type as follows:
1) If a mission has ONE and only ONE POI and ALL WPs reference this POI then the focus on the POI should be excellent throughout the mission. This is actually a limitation of the DJI firmware - only one 'hotpoint' is permitted per mission.
2) In all other cases, the heading of the drone between two WPs will be linearly interpolated between the angles calculated at the WPs. This will result in good focus on the POI at the WPs but the heading will wander off the POI at points in between.
Tajino and I have both done a number of tests to verify what we were told by Litchi – and the results confirm the above.
VLM V2.4.0 was programmed to focus as well as possible on the POI in all cases and so missions of type 2) will focus on the POIs rather 'better' than the real mission.
The purpose of VLM is to give an accurate picture of the mission before it is flown and so in V2.5 .0 I have ‘downgraded’ the way that VLM handles POIs in missions of type 2) to better match the real mission.
The heading ‘wander’ in type 2) missions depends on the relative distances of the two WPs from the POI. If both WPs are a similar distance from the POI then the interpolation will be a good approximation but if they are very different distances from the POI then the ‘wander’ may be significant.
So the takeaway from all of this is:
a) If you want the best possible POI behaviour then you must restrict your mission to a single POI and make sure all WPs reference it.
b) If you need more POIs in your mission but still want reasonably good POI behaviour then you should add extra WPs so that all WPs which reference a given POI are about the same distance from it.
c) If you can’t do either a) or b) then you will have to put up with a bit of POI ‘wander’ in your mission.
The fact that this issue has not surfaced previously probably means that the behaviour of V2.4.0 was satisfactory for most of us – however V2.5.0 should give a better match with the real mission even though the POI behaviour has in most cases been downgraded!
I hope that all makes sense! And thanks to
@Tajino !
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