I already used the Neo Follow-mode with great success for downhill mountain biking.
The DJI follows and descends nicely with the bike down the mountain and keeps generally equal distance and the same shooting angle:


Now the winter is coming and for sure the DJI Neo would be a great device to film us carving down the mountain.
I did the first test last week-end and experience is unfortunately not good:
I was skiing at a low speed (<20km/h). I was flying with mobile phone and drone only.
Initially the drone is filming at the proper angle (high/wide):
The drone has initially no problem to follow horizontally.
However, for some reason the Neo is not descending the mountain together with the tracked person, it seems to keep the initial altitude and as a consequence, it is filming increasingly from the top down:

The drone starts then also increasing horizontal distance while still following:
And finally it stops tracking:

At this time the drone stays high in the air and "manual" control is needed to bring it down again.
There is a high risk to get out of wifi range so that manual control is no longer possible to bring the drone down.
I repeated the trial several times and the behaviour is consistent.

Given the correct behaviour with the mountain bike, even at higher speed and steeper slopes, I suppose that the different behaviour is due to the white show surface with less structure? It seems that the downwards positioning is less accurate and the drone only uses the barometrical sensor to keep altitude.
On the other hand the white surface should make it more simple to distinguish the object and determine it's size.
This should signal the algorism that distance is increasing and force the control to get closer to the object.
Additionally, as the onside controller knows both, the drone inclination and the current gimbal orientation, the algorism should also be able to determine the current angle at which the object is being filmed.
This should also signal to decrease altitude to keep the vertical positioning consistent.

Many thanks for looking into this issue, I am sure that many customers are looking forward to use the Neo in the snow.
With my current experience I cannot recommend this.

Note: Last week-end I was still using the firmware 1.0.300. Is there a chance that the latest firmware released 6th of November is fixing these issues?

Hi FPVrider,

Thank You for reaching out. We are truly sorry for the inconvenience you are experiencing. Yes, this issue has been fixed in the new firmware V01.00.0400 update released on 11/06/2024. The optimized positioning performance and increased flight speed during tracking has been added. Could you give it a try upon updating the firmware and keep us posted on this issue. Thank you for your support and understanding. If you have any other questions, kindly let us know.

DJI Gamora Posted at 11-7 20:52
Hi FPVrider,

Thank You for reaching out. We are truly sorry for the inconvenience you are experiencing. Yes, this issue has been fixed in the new firmware V01.00.0400 update released on 11/06/2024. The optimized positioning performance and increased flight speed during tracking has been added. Could you give it a try upon updating the firmware and keep us posted on this issue. Thank you for your support and understanding. If you have any other questions, kindly let us know.

Many thanks for the fast reply!
Great to hear that this specific shortcoming is fixed in the latest firmware.
I will gladly test it at the next opportunity, unfortunately mountains with enough snow are not nearby in November...

DJI Gamora Posted at 11-7 20:52
Hi FPVrider,

Thank You for reaching out. We are truly sorry for the inconvenience you are experiencing. Yes, this issue has been fixed in the new firmware V01.00.0400 update released on 11/06/2024. The optimized positioning performance and increased flight speed during tracking has been added. Could you give it a try upon updating the firmware and keep us posted on this issue. Thank you for your support and understanding. If you have any other questions, kindly let us know.

I was finally able to test the new firmware on the same slope.
Functionally has indeed improved, the drone is now descending while tracking together with me down the mountain.

So for beginners that go slowly down the mountain it should be okay now to capture your first turns in the snow with the Neo.
It goes without saying that this is a no-go for crowded slopes, but if you have space like in my pictures above, it shall be fine.

However, to do some nice carving turns some minimum speed is required.
Even if I try to take it easy and descend slowly, concentrating on nice turns only, when I finally have sufficient speed for a nice turn I am loosing the Neo.
The Neo is simply not fast enough.
I did some speed tests while skiing with my GPS watch. Even when carving down a blue slope and trying to keep it slow, my speed easily exceeds 30 km/h. So for me it is unfortunately not an option.
Would be great to make the Avata 2 do also tracking mode. I believe that technically this would be no problem.

Noticing that tracking is lost is still the same big issue.
Skiing is a relatively noise sport, with the helmet on it is not so easy to hear the drone engine clearly, it is easy to go down to far when the drone has stopped tracking.
It would be  a very useful feature, ALSO FOR OTHER SPORTS, if the DJI Fly app could trigger a sound on the mobile phone when tracking stops.

FPVrider Posted at 11-21 12:38
I was finally able to test the new firmware on the same slope.
Functionally has indeed improved, the drone is now descending while tracking together with me down the mountain.

Hi there.

Thank you for keeping us posted. We're glad to hear this has been addressed. Kindly take note, DJI Neo can be used as an entry-level device for M mode, suitable for throttle control, altitude stability, and level flight practices. However, its body is very compact and small, so it is not recommended for continuous high-speed flying and high maneuvering actions, such as Dive, Split-S, Power Loop, Yaw-Spin, etc.

Feel free to contact us if you have other inquiries. Have a nice day ahead!

DJI Gamora Posted at 11-21 22:50
Hi there.

Thank you for keeping us posted. We're glad to hear this has been addressed. Kindly take note, DJI Neo can be used as an entry-level device for M mode, suitable for throttle control, altitude stability, and level flight practices. However, its body is very compact and small, so it is not recommended for continuous high-speed flying and high maneuvering actions, such as Dive, Split-S, Power Loop, Yaw-Spin, etc.

Yes, this is understood. I was actually positively surprised when testing Manual mode with the Neo, for sure not the same power as  my Avata's or the DJI FPV, but still fun. Actually, I believe that with the Neo it should be really easier to learn flying in Manual mode, for this purpose the lower speed of the Neo is actually a big advantage.

I understand that the Neo is not made for high speed tracking, therefore it could be interesting to bring the tracking mode also to the Avata. I guess it does not have Wifi, so direct control with the mobile phone would not be possible.
But usage with the RC-N3 should be possible

Back to the Neo:
When you look at the video that I uploaded, I believe that there could still be some potential software improvements for the tracking mode.
As you can see, I was really trying to go slowly, it does not seem that I was too fast when the tracking stopped.
I have rather the impression that the tracking system was "confused" by the turns.
I believe that here some finetuning from your experts could still make the drone better for tracking ski action.

FPVrider Posted at 2024-11-22 02:42
Yes, this is understood. I was actually positively surprised when testing Manual mode with the Neo, for sure not the same power as  my Avata's or the DJI FPV, but still fun. Actually, I believe that with the Neo it should be really easier to learn flying in Manual mode, for this purpose the lower speed of the Neo is actually a big advantage.

I understand that the Neo is not made for high speed tracking, therefore it could be interesting to bring the tracking mode also to the Avata. I guess it does not have Wifi, so direct control with the mobile phone would not be possible.

Hi! I'm a NEO owner for like a month now.
I've used the drone for mountainbiking and also snowboarding. It does a good job in a straigh line and not very steep terrain. I think that for snow sports a new mode should me introduced, skimode. That because on a flat ground, or something with small slope, the drone will follow your path, to avoid hitting the trees or the obstacles, and thats a good thing. When we talk about snow sports, the moves that you make to brake are turn after turn and so on, and the NEO is trying to follow your path, which is not necessarily, because combined with the steep slope, it will loose track of you fast instead of focusing on the hight and distance. I am sure that a firmware update could help, but i understand that is hard for the drone to know when you will really take a turn and when you are making slalom.
Im sorry for my bad English

I also did some tests on ski slopes with the NEO and totally agree with the comments above. Neo is too slow for following a skier and even if he doesn't lose the target, it switches to spotlight at about 25 km/h, that is too slow for a skier. It should be able to follow at 40, more or less.. Neo can fly at that speed, I believe it must be a "protection" to give up folllowing over 25 km/h...
Also please make following direction smoother, to follow main direction of the skier, not following every turn he makes. This should be  quite simple to implement I believe..

Here my tests https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCvXIQpw4rXlxmGg_jVHvCvekowkWTILJ

Thanks