I'm trying to employ Zenmuse X5 camera on my Inspire to shot high resolution 360x180 panoramas with 25 mm lens. At this moment of history X5 camera is still good enough to do just that. Such task requires aproximately 6 rows of 12 RAW images each, impossible to perform manually with single battery. Although I had some success shooting automated panos with Autopilot app (the one and only 3rd party app able to control Inspire 1 pano mode in relatively reliable way), the process of switching from DJI Go app to Autopilot with the bird hovering is awkward and time consuming. While Autopilot is offering truly advanced and customizable set of pano shooting parameters, focusing and exposure meterings must be done from within DJI Go app first.

Said that - and considering growing popularity of still panoramic photography - it will be nice to get that option for Inspire 1/2 class drones in DJI Go/Go 4 apps. I hope our friendly admins will be able to get some info at the source if such feature is considered for future development ...

I hate to say it, but I believe it highly unlikely to have any further development to the Inspire 1 firmware and/or functions to the DJI Go app. Maybe the I2 but it also seems to me that DJI is perfectly happy with whatever functions are already available on the 2, I really don't have one so would be talking s*** ifI said it's not already available, However, I think Litchi has a Pano mode and if it does it doesn't need to start with Go as Litchi can adjust camera as well as the Go app can.

mixchief Posted at 2018-5-9 12:14
I hate to say it, but I believe it highly unlikely to have any further development to the Inspire 1 firmware and/or functions to the DJI Go app. Maybe the I2 but it also seems to me that DJI is perfectly happy with whatever functions are already available on the 2, I really don't have one so would be talking s*** ifI said it's not already available, However, I think Litchi has a Pano mode and if it does it doesn't need to start with Go as Litchi can adjust camera as well as the Go app can.

Unfortunately Litchi is not able to hold Inspire 1 steady in hover during pano sequence shooting. For some reason she drifts with the wind between each row. They (Litchi) told me that this is known issue due to some Inspire1/Phantom 3 fw bug (!), which I found hard to believe. Oh, well, it is what it is ...

Matthew Dobrski Posted at 2018-5-9 13:42
Unfortunately Litchi is not able to hold Inspire 1 steady in hover during pano sequence shooting. For some reason she drifts with the wind between each row. They (Litchi) told me that this is known issue due to some Inspire1/Phantom 3 fw bug (!), which I found hard to believe. Oh, well, it is what it is ...

I don't know that the I1 o I2 as it seems from all new reports here, will be able to hod steady enough period. I haven't tried an aerial pano yet but just from observing the bird seems like an uphill battle

mixchief Posted at 2018-5-9 14:57
I don't know that the I1 o I2 as it seems from all new reports here, will be able to hod steady enough period. I haven't tried an aerial pano yet but just from observing the bird seems like an uphill battle

Most of never DJI creations should hover fairly steady due to much improved compas/IMU systems. Inspire 1 and Phantom 3 generation, however, are NOT the best in this department.  Moreover, none of involved apps is able to take full advantage of Inspire's rotating gimbal, therefore the bird is yawing like Phantom during shooting the row of pictures (!). With any wind present that translates to chaotic barometer/compass readings and fluctuations of both attitude and horizontal position. To a degree the issue is fixable in good panorama stitching software, but the best results are achieved during calm weather indeed.

Matthew Dobrski Posted at 2018-5-9 13:42
Unfortunately Litchi is not able to hold Inspire 1 steady in hover during pano sequence shooting. For some reason she drifts with the wind between each row. They (Litchi) told me that this is known issue due to some Inspire1/Phantom 3 fw bug (!), which I found hard to believe. Oh, well, it is what it is ...

Hi Matthew, i’ve used Litchi in Pano mode with some success. On one job I did notice the wind drift but I flew again on a less windy day. One other function which did not work for me on Litchi was the gimbal 360 rotation. For some reason this failed short of 360 degrees. I switched to aircraft rotation and this worked but gimbal rotation would have had less parallax issues. I also had to do quite a lot of post work to cover up stitching errors (PTGui). Overall good result but time consuming. Am trying Autopilot at moment and have mixed results largely due to the relatively steep learning curve. More work required on this one. Hope all goes well for you and good luck. Geoff

Geoff67 Posted at 2018-5-11 11:53
Hi Matthew, i’ve used Litchi in Pano mode with some success. On one job I did notice the wind drift but I flew again on a less windy day. One other function which did not work for me on Litchi was the gimbal 360 rotation. For some reason this failed short of 360 degrees. I switched to aircraft rotation and this worked but gimbal rotation would have had less parallax issues. I also had to do quite a lot of post work to cover up stitching errors (PTGui). Overall good result but time consuming. Am trying Autopilot at moment and have mixed results largely due to the relatively steep learning curve. More work required on this one. Hope all goes well for you and good luck. Geoff

Geoff. I'm about to conclude that indeed Autopilot seems to be the one and only app able to execute panoramic sequence successfully. Somehow they managed this drifting issue, which appears to be typical for Inspire 1 generation in pano mode.  My M200 - for change - performed pano perfectly under Litchi control, naturally with yawing aircraft due to not-foldable landing gear. This beast is rock-steady in hover, but that's another story ...

Back to Inspire 1 ... I'm shooting really hi-res panoramas, stitching average 70 images taken with 25mm lens. In most cases Autopilot delivers just fine, wind or not, but this amount of pictures is challenging battery capacity. To do it I'm using relatively new TB48 battery, giving me enough time to reach the destination, shoot the sequence and come back home with some juice left.  With standard 15mm lens, however, you'll need much less pictures to stitch 360x180 spherical image. Keep experimenting, PM me if you're in doubt with Autopilot.  

Matthew Dobrski Posted at 2018-5-11 20:14
Geoff. I'm about to conclude that indeed Autopilot seems to be the one and only app able to execute panoramic sequence successfully. Somehow they managed this drifting issue, which appears to be typical for Inspire 1 generation in pano mode.  My M200 - for change - performed pano perfectly under Litchi control, naturally with yawing aircraft due to not-foldable landing gear. This beast is rock-steady in hover, but that's another story ...

Back to Inspire 1 ... I'm shooting really hi-res panoramas, stitching average 70 images taken with 25mm lens. In most cases Autopilot delivers just fine, wind or not, but this amount of pictures is challenging battery capacity. To do it I'm using relatively new TB48 battery, giving me enough time to reach the destination, shoot the sequence and come back home with some juice left.  With standard 15mm lens, however, you'll need much less pictures to stitch 360x180 spherical image. Keep experimenting, PM me if you're in doubt with Autopilot.

Hi Matthew, thanks for getting back. I’ll keep you posted of success ...and failures!  Geoff

Matthew Dobrski Posted at 2018-5-11 20:14
Geoff. I'm about to conclude that indeed Autopilot seems to be the one and only app able to execute panoramic sequence successfully. Somehow they managed this drifting issue, which appears to be typical for Inspire 1 generation in pano mode.  My M200 - for change - performed pano perfectly under Litchi control, naturally with yawing aircraft due to not-foldable landing gear. This beast is rock-steady in hover, but that's another story ...

Back to Inspire 1 ... I'm shooting really hi-res panoramas, stitching average 70 images taken with 25mm lens. In most cases Autopilot delivers just fine, wind or not, but this amount of pictures is challenging battery capacity. To do it I'm using relatively new TB48 battery, giving me enough time to reach the destination, shoot the sequence and come back home with some juice left.  With standard 15mm lens, however, you'll need much less pictures to stitch 360x180 spherical image. Keep experimenting, PM me if you're in doubt with Autopilot.

Autopilot allows you to set the 'settle' time (not their wording but...) I've worked with it at 1 second without any issues on calm days. I will say I agree that it's the only option with the Inspire1P. It does have pause ability which might be the best solution for your situation. I've been more than happy with the resolution using the 12mm, but really want to try a few with the 45mm some day. I've had only minor issues stitching using PTGuiPro. The Masking ability makes all the difference and is more than worth the money if you're going to be doing any more than occasional panos.

flighttime1 Posted at 2018-5-11 23:05
Autopilot allows you to set the 'settle' time (not their wording but...) I've worked with it at 1 second without any issues on calm days. I will say I agree that it's the only option with the Inspire1P. It does have pause ability which might be the best solution for your situation. I've been more than happy with the resolution using the 12mm, but really want to try a few with the 45mm some day. I've had only minor issues stitching using PTGuiPro. The Masking ability makes all the difference and is more than worth the money if you're going to be doing any more than occasional panos.

Flighttime, keep in mind that shooting 360x180 pano with 45mm will require splitting the session into two separate sequences (battery capacity issue). With 25mm you'll need 6 rows of 12 images each + 1 nadir, starting at about 15 deg above horizon. With 2 seconds of "settle" time between each shot at 100m attitude that's about as much as a single battery will allow without alarming messages. Here's an YT video explaining the strategy for shooting giga-size panorama with 45mm:

Matthew Dobrski Posted at 2018-5-12 00:59
Flighttime, keep in mind that shooting 360x180 pano with 45mm will require splitting the session into two separate sequences (battery capacity issue). With 25mm you'll need 6 rows of 12 images each + 1 nadir, starting at about 15 deg above horizon. With 2 seconds of "settle" time between each shot at 100m attitude that's about as much as a single battery will allow without alarming messages. Here's an YT video explaining the strategy for shooting giga-size panorama with 45mm:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n56F1ZTYQs

Matt... The issue will be how well the Pause function works in conjunction with setting the 'Use Aircraft Position'. As long as Autopilot links back up after a battery change and resumes where it left off, along with goes back to the original position, unlimited images should be possible. I'll be testing this out fairly soon so expect to see a report on the results here. Also... What programs are you using in that video. I'm pretty much locked in with PTGui Pro and Photoshop.

flighttime1 Posted at 2018-5-12 11:03
Matt... The issue will be how well the Pause function works in conjunction with setting the 'Use Aircraft Position'. As long as Autopilot links back up after a battery change and resumes where it left off, along with goes back to the original position, unlimited images should be possible. I'll be testing this out fairly soon so expect to see a report on the results here. Also... What programs are you using in that video. I'm pretty much locked in with PTGui Pro and Photoshop.

This is not my video,  there's some pano guru in Switzerland who did that and many other videos on this topic, he's really deep into. Myself I'm using Photoshop for pre/post processing, Kolor Auto Pano Giga for stitching and Kolor Pano Tour Pro for final interactive panorama creations. Pretty expensive set of software since standard Pano Tour version will not process stitches bigger than 200MP. I mean, it will but with downsampling the input image to lower resolution. I'm not sure what other app will allow to create truly gigasize tours. Also, as for now I didn't find any reliable place to share my Hi-Res creations without downsampling. The research is on ...

Matthew Dobrski Posted at 2018-5-12 11:34
This is not my video,  there's some pano guru in Switzerland who did that and many other videos on this topic, he's really deep into. Myself I'm using Photoshop for pre/post processing, Kolor Auto Pano Giga for stitching and Kolor Pano Tour Pro for final interactive panorama creations. Pretty expensive set of software since standard Pano Tour version will not process stitches bigger than 200MP. I mean, it will but with downsampling the input image to lower resolution. I'm not sure what other app will allow to create truly gigasize tours. Also, as for now I didn't find any reliable place to share my Hi-Res creations without downsampling. The research is on ...

Ahhh yes. How to display them. I've tried a few different scripts on web sites and haven't been happy with any to be honest.
This was done over a year ago and was one of my first drone panos. Emeryville CA

I'm currently looking for a script that will allow me to go to the next level having multiple linked panos. For the most part, I've seen a few gigapixel panos online but I don't remember how they got past the large file loading issue. Most scripts break the file up into individual files and then link them in the browser. You are still restricted with that method to about an 80 meg original file unless you want to deal with extreme loading times.

flighttime1 Posted at 2018-5-12 12:07
Ahhh yes. How to display them. I've tried a few different scripts on web sites and haven't been happy with any to be honest.
This was done over a year ago and was one of my first drone panos. Emeryville CA

Flighttime, do you mean 80 MP (megapixels) size of stitched image? That's probably what stitched  handheld smartphone pics will deliver. P4P made sphere is over 200 MP, mine are over 500 MP ... BTW, linked panos with tons of other bells and whistles embedded (i.e. background music, maps, pictures, videos) is what Pro version of Kolor Panotour is offering. Most of it I'll never use, but unlimited pano resolution is a thing I can't ignore. It's like a home Imax ...

Matthew Dobrski Posted at 2018-5-12 15:12
Flighttime, do you mean 80 MP (megapixels) size of stitched image? That's probably what stitched  handheld smartphone pics will deliver. P4P made sphere is over 200 MP, mine are over 500 MP ... BTW, linked panos with tons of other bells and whistles embedded (i.e. background music, maps, pictures, videos) is what Pro version of Kolor Panotour is offering. Most of it I'll never use, but unlimited pano resolution is a thing I can't ignore. It's like home Imax ...

Matt... Yes, 80 megs is pretty tiny. My usual 360x180 stitched images are about 4 gigs. The issue I'm talking about is a person on their tablet with a slow connection is only going to see an out of focus image for 15 or so seconds as the pano loads and most likely will move on before it does. I'm going to have to look into how well Kolor Panotour Pro handles this.

flighttime1 Posted at 2018-5-12 15:35
Matt... Yes, 80 megs is pretty tiny. My usual 360x180 stitched images are about 4 gigs. The issue I'm talking about is a person on their tablet with a slow connection is only going to see an out of focus image for 15 or so seconds as the pano loads and most likely will move on before it does. I'm going to have to look into how well Kolor Panotour Pro handles this.

Let me know when you're ready to dive into Kolor Pano Tour Pro, I know a thing or two about ... And, oh, learned a nice trick with Autopano today: how to avoid misaligned first image. Create Custom sequence with starting at 180 degree horizontally! Once you anchor your bird at desired coordinates and attitude, set the picture parameters and focus, turn the nose pointing toward less significant sector on the horizon and hit "use aircraft location". Immediately after that do engage the mission. No abrupt turning to left, causing this misalignment later in quilt! I don't know why they complicated this routine so much ...