Wonderful...

I downlaod the flight sim for android for the FPV onto my Samsung Galaxy S20 Note without trouble.

Getting it to work, was an entirely different story.

At one point, I decided if it asked me if it was "OK for the app to access DJI Glass" one more (unrpintable) time, I was just going to grenade it, and toss it off the back deck. Then I remembered that solution doesn't work so good for software...

I poked and prodded it, restarted everytthing several times, including restarting my phone, and I finally got it to start. As I was going through the controller tutorial, I thought, "Wow, this is going to be awesome!"

But it was not to be.

The thing wouldn't let me advance after the tutorial was done! I hit what looked like the right buttons, but either nothing happened, or it sent me back to the beginning of the tutorial. Finally, I got a puke storm of pop-ups, one of which finally said "DJI Fly closed because there's a bug in the app".

OK...I restarted everything, and went ot open DJI fly to update it...and it wouldn't even open, and I got a pop-up saying that the app had a bug! It didn't used to, but now it does.

Wonderful...now I can't fly any of my Minis at all!

Is there an actual solution for this? I know, I know, uninstall and re-install DJI Fly, and yada-yada. That's always the least graceful solution. Which I'm going to do if I have to, but...

Is there any reason to believe that will actualy work??

This is like a kid opening his cool new Christmas toy, and having one of his parents properly take it away, and tossing it into the roaring fire in the fireplace.

The installation process for this app is definitely not ready for prime time.

Grrrr...

TCS

Hi there. Thank you for reaching out and we're sorry for the trouble that this has caused. Can you please confirm what specific Android flight simulator you downloaded? Also, could you please send us a screenshot of the error message showing on your mobile device when you open the DJI Fly app? Kindly please try to uninstall and reinstall the DJI Fly app and check if the issue persists. Please keep us posted. Thank you.

DJI Paladin Posted at 8-30 00:53
Hi there. Thank you for reaching out and we're sorry for the trouble that this has caused. Can you please confirm what specific Android flight simulator you downloaded? Also, could you please send us a screenshot of the error message showing on your mobile device when you open the DJI Fly app? Kindly please try to uninstall and reinstall the DJI Fly app and check if the issue persists. Please keep us posted. Thank you.

Thanks for your quick response.

I downloaded the sim form the DJI website using the following path:

DJI.com
   -->
      Avata
          -->
               Downloads
                   -->
                       DJI Virtual Flight (DJI Avata)

No can do on the screenshot. The error message was transitory, which is actually a fairly general problem with DJI error messages. Now, DJI fly doesn't even try to open, and displays no error message. When I try to open it, my phone briefly burps, and then goes back to its previous, with no opening behavior or any message of any kind from DJI Fly.

Yeah, yeah, I now the drill, uninstall, re-install. I'll do that today, and let you know how it turns out. Does that mean I'll lose any flight data that I haven't yet synced to AirData yet?

Again, thanks for your quick response.

TCS

Update 30Aug22

I have an update on the behavior of the failure mode. As I described, when I punched the icon for DJI Fly, nothing happened, except a burp. DJI Fly didn't really try to start. But the DJI Fly "panel" showed up in the running app list that you get when you hit the three bars on the lower left of the screen on an Android device. Weird.

I went to the Google Play store to uninstall DJI Fly...it's indescribably lame to have to be online to uninstall an app, but it is what it is. GPlay said that there were 11 updates available for various apps, and thinking that might help, I told it to install them all.

When that was done, I restarted the device, and it made no difference. DJI Fly still "existed", in its own ghostly way. I generally don't like messing with systems when they're in a weird state like that until I get it sorted out, but I adopted a "Damn the torpedoes!" approach, and went to download and -re-install DJI Fly. The download went fine, but when I told it to install it, the installer asked if I wanted to update the DJI Fly app. Update an app that only "exists" in a weird ghostly state? In for a penny, in for a pound...I told it to go for it.

Everything seemed to work fine after that. At one point it asked me if I wanted to retain the information stored in the album, and I said yes. When it was done, DJI Fly told me there was an update for the FPV Goggles V2, and asked me if I wanted to download it. I said yes, and that seemed to work fine. The next step is hook the goggles up, and see if it really did worked. I'll report the results when I have them.

Anyone who reads my posts knows that I love DJI, and DII products. But the DJI update and product integration processes are...consistently inconsistent. It doesn't have to be that way. I've managed enough system installations and integrations in my time to know that it's not always easy to do it well. But it can be done.

I think DJI puts too much emphasis on "time to market", at the expense of product quality and software testing. I know that thorough regression testing is a dying art, but it's still the right thing to do. DJI has no serious competition in the consumer drone market, so the emphasis on "time to market" is inappropriate. Take a little more time in development and test, and take a little longer to deliver. You have no serious competition, so your market while still be there when you deliver higher quality products and update and integration routines, a wee bit later. Chill.

Just some friendly advice to DJI, from one of your biggest fans, who also has decades of SW development and installation experience.

Slow down just a bit, to make the experience for your non-stealable customers, a little better. They'll be even more firmly yours as a result.

Thx,

TCS

Update #2 30Aug22

DJI Fly seems to have re-installed OK. When I launched the sim app, my phone seemed to develop schizophrenia; it couldn't decide whether it wanted to display DJI Fly, or the sim app. When it stated the sim app, IT started DJI Fly.

I did everything in the sequence that it told me to do them. It sang me it's little song...incessantly...while telling me that it was connecting, without ever actually connecting. At one point the app on the phone...but NOT the display in the goggles, told me to connect the controller. I turned the controller on, and gradually, nothing happened. It eventually gave it's double beep, and then gradually, nothing happened. Except that the display on the phone, and the display in the goggles, were never in sync again. And the little song just kept playing...apparently forever. Or, maybe it will stop when the phone battery runs out.

I'm going to turn everything off, and then try again ONE MORE TIME today. After that, I'm done being a beta tester for today. They ain't payin' me enough for this.

Oh...wait...they ain't payin' me at all!

The Android sim may or may not be a good app. I have no way of knowing, because the routine for the linking and integration is very seriously not ready for prime time.

If it doesn't work when I try it again, I may or may not try it again tomorrow morning. Maybe, after all the components and apps get a good night's sleep, they will regain their sanity. Seems unlikely, though...

I've wasted most of my free time on this today. Tomorrow I may just flush all this sim stuff, and actually go fly my FPV. After all, I already know how to fly it safely in Manual mode. I just thought the sim would be a good way to try things that I would never try in the actual aircraft. Maybe eventually, but certainly not yet.

If I had bought either an FPV or an Avata, and I wasn't going to fly in Manual mode until I got some sim time, I'd be very seriously annoyed. As it is, I'm just mildly and transiently annoyed.

DJI, you can be better than this!

I await a suggestion for something to ty, that I haven't already tried.

With frustration,

TCS

Update #3 30Aug22

Here's a new twist. I close all the running apps, and re-start the phone. When the restart is done, the apps still show as being open and running! This is almost like demonic possession!

I just did a full, cold shutdown of the phone. Presumably that will work, but then, a restart should work, and it don't. My phone is entirely up to date, because it always is, so it's not that.

(sigh)

TCS

Update 22-09-01

I decided to get a bit more disciplined about this, and I documented today's failed attempt to get the sim to work, which I'll describe shortly. First, a quick recap of the end of the last session.

My Galaxy Note S20 got hot during the process. That phone has never gotten hot before. Weird. When I plugged it in to recharge it, it burped, and then showed the little lightning bolt suggesting that the battery was fully discharged. It wasn't...It never got below 35% during the failed attempt, and eventually, it jumped quickly back to that number, and charged properly from that point on. I've never seen anything dimly like that kind of charge behavior from it, not ever. Something very weird was done to my phone. For reference, my phone is always updated to the latest revision of it's OS, so it wasn't that.

Now, on to todays failed attempt. Here's the sequence of events:

1) Close all apps on phone
2) Re-start phone
3) Launch sim app
4) From that point on, I precisely follow the instructions that the sim app provides on my phone screen
5) Power on the goggles
6) Connect the phone to the goggles. Time stamp 0924
7) The sim app launches DJI Fly on the phone. The screen on the phone goes to the DJI Fly opening page, and stays there
8) The goggles ask me to confirm that the props are properly and securely attached to the aircraft. The aircraft is powered dead off...no battery in it.
9) I confirm that the mythical props are fine
10) The goggle screen goes to the generic FPV slide show.
11) Time stamp 0929. Gradually, nothing happens. The phone and the goggles remain in the state just described. No changes.
12) I switch the screen on the phone back to the sim app. It is singing, and says it's connecting
13) Time stamp 0934. Gradually, nothing happens. Nothing has changed
14) At a dead end, I decided to turn the controller on. It starts blinking.
15) Time stamp 0939. The controller starts beeping! But that's all it does. It just keeps beeping. No change on either screen, phone or goggles. I have no clue what the RC wants me to do.
16) Time stamp 0944. At a dead end, I push and hold the power button on the RC, and it starts Rabbit Beeping. The spacing of the beeps changes, and the lights come on in sequence, endlessly
17) Time stamp 0947. Declare failure, turn everything off.

I should note that on some of the previous failed attempts, I got to a "start RC" step displayed on the phone, and when I did, it ran me through the little demo of the sticks and the control wheel. But when the demo was done, it never took me anywhere that would let me actually  launch the sim. This happened a couple of times. This time, I never say anything like that on the phone screen.

Assuming this works eventually, I will very seriously need to change to a different voice for the app...

I hope that the DJI folks will read this, see some obvious thing that I'm doing wrong, tell me what it is, and when I stop doing it, everything works. I hope so, because I'm running out of ideas.

Different things to try? Anyone?

Thx,

TCS