Dear DJI

You have just made every Mini 3 Pro 360 Pano user very very happy today! Thank you so much!!

It is very refreshing to know that you do listen to your users and you now have the only drone on the market that as far as I am aware can capture a complete and full 360 x 180 Pano. This means for many of us we can now QUICKLY capture a full panorama or if conditions are changing quickly and we just aren't sure which bit of the scene to include in the shot we can hit that sphere pano button and sort it out later.

This now means we can take panos in closed in spaces and have a high chance of creating successful stitches.

I haven't tested yet as raining here but SPFlyer has and is pretty impressed so if he is happy I am happy as he makes top notch 36 Panos.  

Thanks again DJI you have just made the Mini 3 Pro SO SO much more user friendly and capable  

Cheers

Bussty

Definitely super great news.   Now I just need to start experimenting more with the 360 panos.

DowntownRDB Posted at 8-17 17:27
Definitely super great news.   Now I just need to start experimenting more with the 360 panos.

So much easier now Downtown, just make sure you have a good external Pano stitcher

Bussty Posted at 8-17 17:35
So much easier now Downtown, just make sure you have a good external Pano stitcher

Which one do you recommend?

Thank you all for your support of DJI, customer feedback is important to us, we will keep optimizing and will work on more features. Happy flying!

DJI Susan Posted at 8-17 17:49
Thank you all for your support of DJI, customer feedback is important to us, we will keep optimizing and will work on more features. Happy flying!

Thanks DJ Susan, very good to know you certainly have proved that in this case

DowntownRDB Posted at 8-17 17:43
Which one do you recommend?

Hi Downtown

Panorama Studio is pretty good and a little cheaper but I use PTGUI. Not cheap but they both do great jobs.

Good luck!

Bussty

I did a quick test in the garden, it works very well

It is a positive step. I haven't updated yet but I'm as keen as you to try the extended gimbal travel for 360 panos.

I have had a chance to test. Looks like DJI have gone with keeping the gimbal horizontal (a very knowledgeable forum poster did hypothesize this! respect SPFlyer :-) ) for external high quality stitching this leaves a
small gap in the top of the pano, imagine you are on the ground and a board about 2m long is about 6m above you. That is what the gap appears like but this is super easy to effectively fill and usually will be clear sky/cloud anyway. Still an awesome improvement!!

Hi Andrew,

now I have also tried the DNGs and I am thrilled. DJI has eradicated the previously redundant first shot (Mavic Air only needed 25 individual photos!) and created a ground shot and an additional two sky shots in addition to evenly separated four rows of 8 shots each. So a total of 35 images. The final test outside (weather!) is still missing, but it looks like not even one more little sky hole remains!

I'm in the process of uploading some of my panos to Skypixel. There are still a few missing (a complete upload takes about 20 minutes), but tomorrow my best ones should all be there ;-). Forum members interested in 360° panos (mostly with hand filled sky) are welcome to visit my Skypixel site https://www.skypixel.com/users/b ... 9-9c56-3f0497cdf4e2 .

Cheers
SPLflyer

Edit: @Andrew, had not read your posting before (3 min. earlier). You're right, one can live with this little hole ;-).

Bussty Posted at 8-17 17:56
Hi Downtown

Panorama Studio is pretty good and a little cheaper but I use PTGUI. Not cheap but they both do great jobs.

Bussty what settings are you changing in PTGui to get it to stitch,  I tried it and it failed miserably.  

Dear Busty, Why thank them for Delaying a feature they should 'v introduced with the mini on the first day? But it's great You are being polity

DAFlys Posted at 8-17 23:52
Bussty what settings are you changing in PTGui to get it to stitch,  I tried it and it failed miserably.

Hi DAFlys Do you have the PTGUI Pro version? I'm using that and pretty much the default version but under Panorama Editor I use these settings which I think are default anyway but make a big difference...


Here's an example stitch the what seem like quite big holes at the top form the small "plank" I showed earlier...

Bussty Posted at 8-17 17:56
Hi Downtown

Panorama Studio is pretty good and a little cheaper but I use PTGUI. Not cheap but they both do great jobs.

Thanks Bussty.  I think I'll go with PTGUI.

Bashy Posted at 8-17 22:50
I did a quick test in the garden, it works very well

Great to hear.  

alex_markov Posted at 8-18 01:48
Dear Busty, Why thank them for Delaying a feature they should 'v introduced with the mini on the first day?  But it's great You are being polity

Hey Alex

Every single DJI drone prior to the Mini 3 Pro that had Pano capability had an autofill sky function and quite a bit of sky to fill. Looking at this forum I feel Pano makers are definitely in the minority of users, feels like video is the main use of the drone. So DJI had to apply some learns to stitch the full top of the pano (something they have never had to do) for a non-majority user group. So I feel thankful they have chosen to focus on us Pano users when they could have easily passed us by until the next Mini 4 or Air 3 when they could have included that full stitch function and create a group of upgraders who had really been valuing that functionality. I had a deep fear that DJI was going to pass us by but they didn't and now they have something unique so worth a pat on the back I reckon Also these days it seems almost every drone is launched incomplete to their defense the Mini 3 Pro was actually fairly complete compared to say the Mavic 3 on launch. I'm very very happy   

DowntownRDB Posted at 8-18 02:29
Thanks Bussty.  I think I'll go with PTGUI.

Good luck Downtown, the other useful tool is having the ability to edit in Equirectangular  perspective that's how you get that "plank" look and just edit/fill out (so simple now) for that I use Affinity Photo but I'm sure Lightroom or PS have a similar mode.  The trouble ground based 360'ers go to removing the tripod in their panos, we have none of that with a drone

SPLflyer Posted at 8-17 23:36
Hi Andrew,

now I have also tried the DNGs and I am thrilled. DJI has eradicated the previously redundant first shot (Mavic Air only needed 25 individual photos!) and created a ground shot and an additional two sky shots in addition to evenly separated four rows of 8 shots each. So a total of 35 images. The final test outside (weather!) is still missing, but it looks like not even one more little sky hole remains!

Yes in some ways keeping the horizontal format and only having this small hole is a nice fix (as you suggested earlier) keeps all the Fly Apps etc constant and isn't a massive rewrite. I guess one day we may see that little hole gone but not a biggie by any measure

Bussty Posted at 8-18 02:45
Good luck Downtown, the other useful tool is having the ability to edit in Equirectangular  perspective that's how you get that "plank" look and just edit/fill out (so simple now) for that I use Affinity Photo but I'm sure Lightroom or PS have a similar mode.  The trouble ground based 360'ers go to removing the tripod in their panos, we have none of that with a drone

Thanks Bussty.    I'm a slow learner with new software so may take me a while to get good at this but I'm going to give it my best shot.  

Bussty Posted at 8-17 23:33
I have had a chance to test. Looks like DJI have gone with keeping the gimbal horizontal (a very knowledgeable forum poster did hypothesize this! respect SPFlyer :-) ) for external high quality stitching this leaves a
small gap in the top of the pano, imagine you are on the ground and a board about 2m long is about 6m above you. That is what the gap appears like but this is super easy to effectively fill and usually will be clear sky/cloud anyway. Still an awesome improvement!! [view_image]

When i checked the sphere on the remote, it had a decent completed sky...

Bashy Posted at 8-18 07:06
When i checked the sphere on the remote, it had a decent completed sky...

...because the automatically generated JPG is displayed on the remote, where the sky completion exists as before. Only that this time the automatic only has to interpolate a much smaller area and thus the sky (except for the deliberately narrow strip) reproduces the original.

DowntownRDB Posted at 8-18 04:07
Thanks Bussty.    I'm a slow learner with new software so may take me a while to get good at this but I'm going to give it my best shot.

Hey Downtown just sing out if any questions. Cheers  Bussty

Bussty Posted at 8-18 15:52
Hey Downtown just sing out if any questions. Cheers  Bussty

Thanks for the offer Bussty.  Much appreciated.

Bussty Posted at 8-17 23:33
I have had a chance to test. Looks like DJI have gone with keeping the gimbal horizontal (a very knowledgeable forum poster did hypothesize this! respect SPFlyer :-) ) for external high quality stitching this leaves a
small gap in the top of the pano, imagine you are on the ground and a board about 2m long is about 6m above you. That is what the gap appears like but this is super easy to effectively fill and usually will be clear sky/cloud anyway. Still an awesome improvement!! [view_image]

Interesting.

I just tried a test pano and stitched with PTGui and there was no gap at all, it came out as a perfect 360x180 with no holes.

Either way even if I ever see the tiny gap you have its no big deal and easy removed.

Fantastic update from dji and really appreciated by me.

Rogerq Posted at 8-19 04:11
Interesting.

I just tried a test pano and stitched with PTGui and there was no gap at all, it came out as a perfect 360x180 with no holes.

Hi Rogerq that is interesting! Assume the Fill Holes option in the settings in Panorama editor under Blending is turned off? Would be good to know. Cheers Bussty

Thanks @Bussty for checking this out,
I have seen another post on FB that showed similar holes (I'm yet to personally confirm this);
I think the upper rows are skipping some images unfortunately, and whilst this might not be 'a biggie' when shooting skies, it is a problem when shooting underneath bridges for inspections, inside factory buildings, churches, etc.
I still would like to have all the images necessary to create a complete sphere, as manually adding those is quite time consuming and there's never a guarantee it's done properly.
However, a big thanks to DJI this is a great step forward, ALMOST THERE,
thank you team, keep up the momentum!

AVsupport Posted at 8-19 22:55
Thanks @Bussty for checking this out,
I have seen another post on FB that showed similar holes (I'm yet to personally confirm this);
I think the upper rows are skipping some images unfortunately, and whilst this might not be 'a biggie' when shooting skies, it is a problem when shooting underneath bridges for inspections, inside factory buildings, churches, etc.

Cheers AV Support I haven't tested but I think if you were in a situation and you needed that very top you could take 1 or 2 vertical shots at maximum pitch maybe even 1. DJI need to either do a full rewrite to take all images in vertical mode or add a couple of verticals at the end to cover but I think switching the lens orientation can affect some stitchers. Even if they don't do it I think even under bridges etc the area is so small is an easy realistic fill but yes if they can manage it fantastic. What we have now will capture 95% of shots and those interesting overhead cloud formations