I noticed that when I use my beacon for motion tracking, my footage consists mainly of more steep camera gimbal angle (almost top down view), where I only see just the subject and the immediate ground surrounding it. The drone seems to fly higher, even though I have the distance from subject is set to the closest possible. There is no horizon visible, so there is a lost of background and more overall view of the shot.
Filming the the same conditions above, but instead with a phone, yielded more horizontal camera, where I can see more of what's ahead of the subject and also the surroundings. Height floor is enabled in both beacon and phone tracking. It just seems using the beacon makes the drone fly higher over the subject and mainly shoots almost straight down angle videos. I was hoping I can get the same closer to horizon camera angles I get from phone tracking, when using the beacon. It is nice to be able easily switch the position of the drone during flight with the beacon.
What you are seeing is the difference in the way the two different controllers operate. The beacon's default is using the 3 pre-set points for positioning of distance
and alt
together. Another words you set it at one of 3 preset altitude/distance settings creating the envelope it uses to operate within. Nothing is set in stone, OA will override those when needed but it's the basis for it's operating area. With the app the alt and distance are adjusted separately and once you launch using the app and it locks on to the subject the drone is low, same as it is with the beacon. If you filmed at that point with no adjustments to ether the video would look similar but unlikely to be exacty the same.
Rarely does that happen, most adjust the drone's position, depending on which device you're using that positioning it likely going to be different. Except for the closest in setting the beacon presets include significant alt increases with each one.
Let me just jump to my fix since I've dealt with this same issue many times, it may help you. Once you launch using the beacon, use the presets to set the distance you want, don't worry about the alt. Once the distance is set there's a good chance it's going to be too high based on your post, it's often too high for me also. At that point I use the blue button on the beacon to lower it to the alt I want. I basically wand it toward the ground, that will change the envelope for that setting for awhile and any subsequent changes using the beacon presets will change both back to the factory's preset for the newly selected standoff. You'll need to wand it again if it's too high. Like I mentioned I've seen some instances where the beacon arbitrarily changes to another of the 3 settings. that might be me bumping that button on the beacon though. Wanding has always been a tool for me to get away from the limits of the beacon's presets. You can also use it to adjust the surface distance away but that's a little more tricky because of the orientation. Next time you're using it with the beacon, play with the wand function, I think you'll find it's pretty easy way to fix what you've described.
Because of the differences on the way both work I don't think the two will ever look the exact same.
This pic is using the beacon only and you can see the height isn't excessive.
Beacon set at the
3rd setting with the drone wanded down almost to the height floor (min alt).
A couple things I discovered, when wanding drone lower, be careful if the height floor is turned off. It can go noticeably lower then the presets, below the height floor there's typically allot more obstacles to avoid and if there's speed it wouldn't be unusual for the drone to clip a bush or branch. I've got a couple crashes from that same scenerio, no damage but I was lucky. I leave it turned on all the time now.
