FPV or not to FPV that is the question

[barneyg]

I know it';s too soon to be looking at FPV ... I can';t even fly banked turns properly  ... but ....



is it really all its cracked up to be ? ... Ideally I';m wanting my quad for acrobatics rather than filming  things and one of the things I';m certainly finding tough is orientation when the quad is more than a hundred meters or so away, would FPV type setups help to "fix" this ?

I quite like the idea of this :

http://www.1001copters.com/en/monocular-video-glasses/44-lunette-video-monoculaire-pirateye.html

Get both LOS and FPV in one expensive package :)

[Biffa]

...is it really all its cracked up to be ?

Yes, it';s great fun

[ericb]

Do people find there flying improves using FPV ? I also struggle with orientation at any distance. I';ve raced RC cars for 30 years at a decent level, and still race with VRC-PRO but the 3 dimensional bit is still not a natural movement for me. I just think maybe I should just fly FPV and get on with it.

[dp106]

I really struggle flying manually in LOS but in FPV it just feels natural. The experience is much better as you feel like you';re really flying the thing. Orientation issues are a thing of the past as you';re always facing forward.

Downside is if you crash you may struggle to work out where your multirotor is.. I';ve spent some anxious moments wandering round a field with long grass trying to find mine :-S

[Biffa]

It wont help with orientation because when flying FPV left is always left, right is always right etc. There is no real help for flying at distance or orientation other than good old fashioned practice.

Of course though some FC boards can make left always be left by how it manages the model. Naza call it Intelligent Orientation Control.

[powerlord]

If u want los fpv search eBay for eyetop.  Much cheaper.  But for fpv you really need the immersion imho - I ended up putting an LCD mirroring the fatsharks on my tx for filming stuff,  but I couldn';t fpv just looking at the monitor - just feels weird.  Also worth pointing out if u want to be doing more acro fpv you will want a direct mount camera - not a gimbal probably.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 4 Beta

[guest325]

I';ve been evaluating the very same thing myself at the moment, so far I';ve reached the conclusion that if you';re doing acrobatics you don';t really want to be too far away, also think about what it';s going to feel like fpv      well for me anyway!
I also think that a smaller than 450 size model is going to be a lot more capable, Teslaquad is ideal but I think I shall go down the Tricopter route with my own design and shall keep it simple with a KK2 FC. So my opinion is that it';s not worth the extra cost and risk of expensive repairs when things go wrong.

[Col_M]

I definately like both aspects.
LOS flying is really good fun, not that I can do much acro yet but whizzing about in circles and figure of eights is more challening and therefore more rewarding. FPV is just so much damn fun too, seeing what you can fly under, around and seeing stuff from a different perspective.

That';s why I';m building a dedicated FPV quad, I can have all my camera, Vtx, RTH and stuff on that, then have my Q450 as a nice fast, light(ish), cheap quad I can throw around and really have fun with without being too woried if I stack it into the ground.

[Biffa]

...also think about what it';s going to feel like fpv      well for me anyway!

I have made myself queasy just flying around with nothing more daring than a banked turn. I find sitting down much less puke worthy than standing to be honest

In fact I have just come in from FPVing around the field over from my house and sadly the tri just dropped out of the sky

Luckily zero damage as I was doing some low level runs and it fell onto soft earth. It';s looking like the joint for the rear ESC onto the bottom plate failed and sent me spiraling down.

For now it';s out with the beer and the soldering iron will come out tomorrow

[firey1]

Same I like both types
I use video glasses for fpv Just like sun glasses it dont give you that full imersive feeling like goggles as i can look over top if i need but gives me great flying at distance as my eye site not that great in one eye also have a 7 inch screen if i dont want to use the glasss

[Hands0n]

I reckon a bit of both also. My goal is FPV but I';m nowhere near ready yet, and I';ve spent a small fortune getting started and messing around with lots of different bits and pieces as I learn the technicalities and mechanics of the hobby. 

I watch in complete awe some of the FPV that people post up on YouTube and forums.  Someday that is going to be me  ::)

But for now LOS is where I';m at - and like many the brain is slowly making sense of what it sees from my standpoint.   The loss of perspective is all too real, and at a distance of perhaps 200 metres I have not an idea of what way the aircraft is facing so I hit up the RTL and wait for it to come back before regaining manual control again.  Works for me.

[nub]

Orientation takes a very long time before it becomes natural, even at distance u shouldn';t be looking at the quad thinking about what way it is, its something u should just know because of the flight path you';ve just taken, hopefully you';ll get what i mean.

u may want to take a look at the multiwii headfree (carefree) mode.

[Biffa]

Orientation takes a very long time before it becomes natural, even at distance u shouldn';t be looking at the quad thinking about what way it is, its something u should just know because of the flight path you';ve just taken, hopefully you';ll get what i mean.

+1 I fly at distances (at times) when I cannot see what way round the model is at all, you just learn to remember what way you were flying and what your last movement was. It';s something you learn and is hard to explain

[Gav]

with the goggles on, your head can end up at some very strange angles when pulling fancy moves during fpv flying.  Take your goggles off at the end of a flight and why is your nose almost buried in your arm pit?

[teslahed]

It';s something you learn and is hard to explain

I know what you mean. I have a virtual model of my quadcopter in my head at all times whilst i fly the quad (line of sight) and the virtual model is updated based on what i can see as well as my control inputs and known last heading, and my past memories of flight.

So you aren';t simply using your eyes to orientate yourself - you are remembering what you';ve done before and thinking through what you will do next, all the time modelling the way you know the quadcopter should fly at the same time as you fly it. Visuals (and the LEDs especially) help keep you orientated but you don';t only use the visuals.

I';ve now got to the point when flying circles that i can take my eyes off the quad for half a second or so to look at where i';m going, then glance back to the quad. As long as it';s not too blustery i can feel confident that it';s still doing what it should be doing even after not looking at it for half a second or so, it';s not that difficult to predict...

This explains why you can sometimes ';feel'; something is wrong with the quadcopter as soon as you take off, even if you don';t know what. If the real quadcopter is behaving differently to how you think it should be, it just feels wrong and makes flying difficult even if it';s not actually uncontrollable.

Just have someone sneakily change your control rates before takeoff if you don';t believe me. I bet most practiced fliers would notice straight away, even if it was just a few points.

[CurryKitten]

For me, my flying wasn';t too enjoyable until I went FPV.  My LOS flying was starting to get there, I was managing ciruits and figure 8';s - but it was always stressful.  I never got to the point where I was confident about the object orientation in the air.  I had several crashes where I knew my orientation, but the Y of a tri in the air looked like an optical illusion and i became sure it was facing the wrong way - and so wrongly "corrected" it into the ground.

FPV of course fixes all those problems, so I';ve never really gone back.... the downside is that I';m still an awful LOS flyer, but on the plus side I';m having a ball in FPV.  In terms of what the OP mentioned in wanting to do aerobatics - I think this suits both types of flying.  I do find it particularly exhilerating in a multi, as there';s some faith going on - go into a loop and all you see is sky for a while, and the first time you do it that sky seems to be there for about an hour, until you come all the way over.  I';m not very interesting in simply filming things either, so you might want to try the same sort of things I really love to do which is trying to skim the ground at high speed, or getting in really close to the trees and trying not to hit them :)  All good fun, and can be done nice and close in so you don';t risk having too much of a long walk/search if things go pear shaped.

[nub]

personally i don';t think FPV and aerobatics go together, but then it depends on the type of aerobatics we';re talking about, the odd flip, loop here and there should be fine but flying Warthox style FPV no chance