I am in a unique position of having the clients already but I am still learning to fly the Avata. I am a still photographer and need to learn to fly in factories and warehouses in a particular fashion.
I need to be able to fly my Avata indoors and have the capacity to do articulated flight paths like dropping out of orbit in a factory to then fly a tight slow and smooth orbit around someone working, then moving down the line to the next person doing something else. This might repeat 4 or 5 times. There would be no acrobatics at all. This would be to show capacity and capability.
My question is, do I need to fly in manual mode given my particular needs and can I disable GPS without changing the software settings to manual mode? I understand I need to disable  GPS when flying in large buildings.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated and thank you for your perspectives in advance.

So far, I've flown exclusively inside a warehouse and have had no issues. The Avata has flown perfectly fine with no GPS signal. Connecting the goggles 2 to a phone for remote ID compliance in the US has not been affected by being indoors either.

From your description of the intended flight, I don't believe manual mode would be required. Sounds like something that could be done in normal mode with either the remote controller 2 or the motion controller 2. I think the remote controller 2 could potentially give you better fine control.

The Avata is about as loud as a vacuum cleaner up close and moves quite a bit of air. Those two things might be a consideration depending on how close to the workers you are flying and if any materials around your shot might move while in frame or disrupt production (assuming production was live and not staged during the time of your flight)

Profile048 Posted at 4-11 19:57
So far, I've flown exclusively inside a warehouse and have had no issues. The Avata has flown perfectly fine with no GPS signal. Connecting the goggles 2 to a phone for remote ID compliance in the US has not been affected by being indoors either.

From your description of the intended flight, I don't believe manual mode would be required. Sounds like something that could be done in normal mode with either the remote controller 2 or the motion controller 2. I think the remote controller 2 could potentially give you better fine control.

Thank you Profile048,

Thank you so much for this information. May I assume that you do not fly in the manual model and if not, then why?

Your message is encouraging but I am a bit confused now because a couple of people told me that their Avata was jumping around when shooting indoors, so I was concerned that I might need to learn to fly in manual mode to fly warehouses and factories.

I have a client that will let me shoot in their warehouse, so I will run some experiments.

I did adjust the gain and expo settings and it smoothed out the flights in the articulated flight paths that I am practicing on.

I also just bought CineSticks and am wondering if that is now overkill. Any thoughts on that matter?

Are you based in the USA?

ed carreon photo Posted at 4-11 21:46
Thank you Profile048,

Thank you so much for this information. May I assume that you do not fly in the manual model and if not, then why?

You are correct I am not flying manual mode currently. One reason is that I'm new and just learning how to fly proficiently and what the Avatas flight characteristics are. Also, our warehouse is not that large and is full of equipment, material, and trucks that I'm weaving around and flying through. I just find for my flights normal is sufficient, for now. I wait till the warehouse closes down and everyone leaves the office and then look for new routes to take through the pallet racking, trucks, material, etc. Has been a great way to unwind before heading home.

I have not experienced the Avata jumping around or being out of control. I have noticed sometimes if I want to hover that it will drift a bit slowly but not every time. Also, tight enclosed spaces can cause enough turbulence to really throw off the flight controller. For example, if I fly though the bottom of a row of carts too slowly the Avata gets buffeted by its own propwash so hard that it is unable to compensate, and things can get dicey.

If you're flying in a warehouse that has plenty of space and ceiling height, I bet it will fly just fine. I think you're on the right track that you just need to do some test flights and see how it does and what changes in your shot plan you need to make to get the best shots.

I can't comment on the CineSticks other than when I looked at them a while back there were many people who felt it improved their ability to control the drone. I chose to stick with the factory sticks just because I don't know what I want/need yet.

Yup, I fly in Northern California.