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Choosing the right app for the occasion will level up your drone experience.
This is a new AirMap system that lets you push a button to notify nearby airports that you are flying a drone. It’s legal to fly a drone within 5 miles of an airport, but you have to notify the airport or local air traffic control in case they detect it on their radar. AirMap does this online, using a system that the company is building in cooperation with airports, 125 of which support the system so far. This same system also keeps an eye on local air traffic, warning you if any manned aircraft are flying nearby.
It provides new ways to move the camera and track objects, creating much smoother, more natural-looking cinematic shots. Autopilot also captures a lot more data while the drone is flying, which is useful if you are having a technical problem and want to know where the problem lies.
It provides a quick view of all necessary information for drone users. Features of the drone application are, for instance, the weather forecasts and the tracking of the (previous) drone’s flights. It tells you what the weather will be like in a few hours and whether now is a good time to take off. Furthermore, the application indicates no-fly zones to the user. It also indicates well-known no-go-zones, for example airports, as well as lesser known areas such as stadiums and prisons.
The DJI Store app mainly exists to sell you stuff, but it also has another useful feature: a map of flying hotspots. This helps you find who is flying in your neighborhood by letting you know of any user-submitted flying spots in your neighborhood and the profiles of the people who fly there. You can also post a profile yourself and share any inspiring photos of popular spots with other fliers
It provides new ways to move the camera and track objects, creating much smoother, more natural-looking cinematic shots. Autopilot also captures a lot more data while the drone is flying, which is useful if you are having a technical problem and want to know where the problem lies.
DJI has just released this app for serious and professional drone users who want to create complex autonomous flight paths. It’s designed to make the process of creating these paths easier by automating it. The user selects an area on the map that he or she wants to survey, and the app automatically creates a flight path that covers the entire area, giving you the ability to adjust the amount of detail that is needed. If you want much more detailed images (for building a 3D model or for surveying the land), it will create a path with more passes that provides the multiple views that the enhanced detail needs.
GoPro’s Karma drone may have hit a few snags (the company recalled it after the first units it sold kept falling out of the sky), but when it finally becomes widely available, you’ll be able to grab a neat app called Passenger, which allows a second user to view the wireless video from the camera that’s attached to the drone. The second user will also be able to control the camera, panning and tilting it around as the pilot controls the drone itself. In effect, that person will be able to work as the camera operator while the pilot keeps the drone flying.
There are lots of apps available that claim to be drone simulators, but few of them are any good at simulating the real experience. Quadcopter FX Simulator is one of the better ones because it does a very nice job of reproducing the feel and experience of flying a drone. You get access to a number of viewpoints — including the ground — plus a normal camera on the drone and a stabilized gimbal.
The controls can be customized and tweaked a lot, and models of a number of different sizes and types of drone are included. If you pay $4.99 for the pro version, you get more flying locations and even more customization. Unlike the real thing, however, in this app, you just press a button to return to your takeoff point and repair your drone.
This app enables you to plan a flight, then send that information to the drone for it to fly autonomously. You create a flight plan by selecting waypoints and how high you want the drone to be at each one. The app calculates the path to take to fly between them.
More advanced features are also available, such as controlling the direction that the camera is pointing and controlling when a video is recorded. These preplanned flights can also be saved and reloaded at any time, which is useful if you want to take seasonal or construction videos.
Photogrammetry is the process of creating a 3D model from a 2D image, such as a drone video. That’s what Pix4D does: This app automatically creates a flight path for your drone then uploads the video and flight data to the Pix4D servers. You can then use these servers or your desktop PC to crunch through this data, turning the images and location of the drone into a 3D model of whatever you were flying over.
Planning to take a video of a dramatic sunset? Sun Surveyor can help you make sure you get the shot. Working from a map, the app will show you the path of the sun and moon, including precise times for sunrise, sunset and the lunar equivalents over the entire year. If you are at the location, Sun Surveyor will even show you the path that the sun and moon will take in the sky by overlaying it on the camera view, enabling you to scout a location for the perfect shot. It can even use Google Street view data to show you a preview of how the sun might rise over buildings.
This application has been included in the Guardian, Time and Business Insider as one of the best photography apps out there. In contrast to the previous application, it’s expected to be used after the photos have been taken. While drones can capture very dynamic shots, they can often be out of line or blurry in some places. SKRWT allows the user to edit the images afterwards. The user can improve the symmetry of the photos using a grid of horizontal and vertical lines. On the one hand, this app is very popular and the go-to for users looking for an app to solve this problem. On the other hand, like many photography based apps, as mentioned, they are often not free. However, the app is popular for a reason and so the price may be justified, depending on your needs.
