I have to say this up front. THIS is a very cool drone, very cool indeed.
I am of course talking about the new DJI AVATA 360, and this afternoon I managed to sneak a short first flight.
As you may have heard (but hopefully not experienced * ) that Cyclone Narelle has been barrelling across the top of the country and is now in the Indian Ocean and heading my way. Although it is couple of thou’ Kms away, the winds have been strengthening gusting up to 30kph so I wanted to at least get one flight in before the weather starts to turn tomorrow and then sticks with us for the next week or so. Although after 50 + days or so, the rain will be welcome.
I planned nothing fancy for this flight; just using the RC2 controller with the AVATA 360 (I am going to get some PC based practice in with the goggles before I venture with them and the Motion Controller).
So down to the local park by the (Leschenault) inlet where normally in this sort of breeze would be a bunch of windsurfers, but sadly not today, so I just zipped the AVATA 360 around for 10 minutes for fun to get the feel of it.
I have flown everything from the original DJI Mini through the 2, 3, 4 and 5 Pro models, the original FPV, AVATA 2, Air 2S, AIR 3S, MAVIC 3 and 4 Pro and the Flip and NEO models and without any shadow of a doubt, the AVATA 360 is the most responsive by far.
It can literally do a full 180° turn inside its own length and at speed.
Remarkable.
It’s bloody quick too, even in N mode (I didn’t dare touch S at this stage) and after taking off and sending it vertically, it was off like an Exocet!
Unfortunately, after about 10 minutes the wind picked up again so reluctantly, I brought it back down, but I did manage some sample footage which I have thrown into both DaVinci Resolve and DJI Studio.
For quick and dirty editing DJI Studio is more than ample, but if you really want to do serious long form stuff, I’d suggest using DJI Studio to convert the OSV files to MP4 and trhen import into Resolve is the way to go – and hey, its free! You’ll just get a bit of a learning curve, but I intend to put together a tutorial for editing footage from the AVATA 360 in the next few days to get you going.
This will also work with the DJI OSMO 360 camera of course.
One thing to be aware of; the AVATA 360 does have some onboard memory, but even though I was using a 64GB Verbatim SD card that has captured other 360° 4K footage in the past, it couldn’t cope for more than 30 seconds with the video / audio stream the AVATA 360 was poking out.
As soon as I have one, I’ll post a list of cards that DJI recommend and possible alternatives if possible.
I’ll be able to give you more details on the AVATA 360 in the coming days so stay tuned.
To finish, this thing is seriously good fun and puts out exceptional footage to boot.
I’ll have some footage up from the flight soon.
* I have been through 3 Cat 5 cyclones in the last 50 years and none of them was fun. If anyone seriously doubts the power of these things – and the danger – by way of example in 1975 when Cyclone Joan hit Port Hedland, my car was sandblasted on one side, the neighbour’s house imploded and collapsed and RSJ power poles – the type you see coming out of power stations and across the landscape carrying high tension cables buckled and twisted. Luckily no-one died in that one.
The moral is, do NOT underestimate them, and please, please, don’t be ‘brave’ and think catching a wave might be a good idea. You’ll probably die.