DJI Inspire 3: new 8k cinema drone | Hacker News Reader

DJI Inspire 3: new 8k cinema drone

dji.com

161 pointsjackhalford163 comments

Is this yet another DJI drone that's not compatible with DJI's own goggles?

If so, it's a baffling blunder they've made multiple times. This one would even be more embarrassing, since they call the secondary camera a "POV" camera.

Another issue: DJI continues to rip people off for a CinemaDNG "license." CinemaDNG is a free codec that is not encumbered by licensing fees. At $16,500, this scam adds insult to injury: "The format is unencrypted and free from intellectual property encumbrances or license requirements" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CinemaDNG

The thing looks like a very cool professional tool. But these repeated offenses are getting old.

From the same wiki page

The adoption of CinemaDNG among camera manufacturers appears to be hindered by Red Digital Camera’s patent US9245314, which covers in-camera recording of lossless compressed raw video. There had been an unsuccessful attempt to invalidate the patent.

DJI gets around this by moving the recording circuitry outside of the camera. It's in the body of the drone, not in the camera.

Are you implying that is sufficient to circumvent RED’s patent? IANAL but I would argue a camera-drone is still a camera.

Besides that, what you describe sounds like a decision made to reduce weight of the camera module, possibly not related to patent.

BS patents tend to have nonsensical loopholes.

"Are you implying that is sufficient to circumvent RED’s patent? IANAL but I would argue a camera-drone is still a camera."

Yes, the Inspire 2 does this, and it was widely reported that this is how they dodged the BS patent. The weight distribution may also be another bonus, or vice versa.

I actually don't know why there's this perception that the patent only applies to camera-internal compressed raw, because Apple/Atomos have to pay Red royalties but Atomos recorders are obviously external. But you hear it over and over.

The bar for novel/non-obvious seems really low if this patent has been successfully defended.

There is almost no bar now. The USPTO is derelict, and an ignorant ruling allowed what was supposed to be illegal: software patents.

Even worse is that Red simply ripped off JPEG2000 and got a patent on it.

The patent "system" has become a tool for exactly what it was supposed to prevent: the theft of people's work.

Thomas Edison Was a “Patent Troll” (2014) https://slate.com/technology/2014/05/thomas-edison-charles-g...

The only saving grace is the relatively short expiration of twenty years. if it was seventy years after the author's death progress would grind to a halt.

IP expiration dates are a "brain plasticity" parameter in society. Higher values mean lower rates of change, too low values mean too high rates of change. Twenty years is a sweet spot.

20 years is eternity in software. It may as well be forever.

If I remember correctly, the patent is simply compressing the RGBG bayer filter sub-pixels as separate R, G, and B images. That's almost the entirety of it, and some rubber stamper at the USPTO granted it.

Compressing it using JPEG2000. You can actually decompress the image using an off-the-shelf JPEG2000 decoder.

Here's hoping GPT-4 will be used to flood USPTO with trivially "novel" patents, until the right people are forced to admit that the system no longer works at all and needs serious reform.

Imagine an AI trying to defend it self from future better AI by jamming the patent system.

It’s wild (and scary) how many plot points from Accelerando have recently leapt into the realm of plausibility.

Sounds like an interesting book, I’ll check that out

AFAIK it costs something like $10,000 to file a patent, although most of that is legal fees that maybe GPT could reduce.

I imagine in this case a bulk discount would apply.

Do not need to register. Just generate a lot of text based on small derivations of existing patents and put them in a searchable public database (you will have good embeddings anyways) with a clear cryptographic time stamp on it.

Now if a new patent is filed the patent office cannot ignore it as prior work. While the bar for machine generated patents is high. There is IMHO no reason why prior art cannot be machine generated and if something very similar can equally generated by a machine it becomes even more questionable if something is patentable at all.

Nikon is fighting the good fight: https://ymcinema.com/2022/12/08/red-vs-nikon-jury-trial-is-s...

We're all rooting for them.

The Inspire has never been intended to fly with goggles. It has a dedicated "pilot view" FPV camera, but in normal usage it's typically operated by a crew of two, a pilot flying line-of-sight and/or via FPV camera and a dedicated main camera operator, both using similar/identical remote controllers with a display attached (this is typically either a large tablet or a dedicated "proper" camera monitor).

Why would it have to be "intended" for that? If someone wants to do it, why prevent it? They say outright that the thing uses the same generation of wireless transmission ("O3") as their current goggles and stand-alone camera & transmitter.

Not to mention that they make a big deal out of being able to send video to two destinations at once, ideal for a feed going to goggles.

Is the drone "intended" to be carried around by hand while filming? It doesn't have handles for that, and yet they show a guy doing it in their promo video.

Project requirements / intended use is important. This is like asking why Betaflight doesn't support automated flight profiles or loiter. It's not a bad question or unreasonable request, but can be answered as "out of scope / not a commonly-requested feature".

That answer would be hard to validate here. It already has the necessary wireless-transmission feature. And if the feature weren't desired, why would it exist on ANY drone?

Look up "cinewhoop" drones. DJI even makes a drone that addresses this market. It just doesn't have the image quality that this one does.

I'd say simply supporting an already-existing DJI video receiver is way more of an expected use case than carrying a drone around in your hands while filming.

> And if the feature weren't desired, why would it exist on ANY drone?

Different market segments. To draw earlier on my analogy, loiter and automated flight exist in iNav, PX4, and Ardupilot.

Are you the target market for this product? Do you plan to buy one? Have you talked to people who are? Do they want goggles support?

Yes, I am. If it supports goggles, I will most likely buy it. And I did get a response from B&H to a question about it today, saying that many customers have indeed inquired about this capability but there is no information from DJI about it yet. Here's the exact statement from B&H:

"Unfortunately DJI has not provided further insight as to whether these two will be compatible. We hope they are, with a provided firmware update in some months, as customers have really desired another non-racing fpv headset."

For what that's worth...

I don’t know. If the drone happens to have Bluetooth and a speaker, should it just obviously support being used as a Bluetooth speaker just in case someone wants to do that?

Um, yes, since it was built with those functions.

I’m not well-versed in the UAS laws globally, but in Canada you basically need to have a spotter if the PIC doesn’t have unaided line of sight to the aircraft[1]. DJI tends to go above and beyond the actual legal limitations when it comes to aviation safety, so this doesn’t surprise me a whole lot. It’s often frustrating; my Mavic Mini 1 often prevents me from doing perfectly legal things in my own yard because I live pretty close to an airport. I can unlock it, but last I checked it required using a laptop to fill out some forms and was quite a bit more complicated than the usual 30-second setup that I love.

[1] Aircraft less than 250g do not have the same regulations, which is why the TinyWhoop family of aircraft are super popular here for FPV racing.

Given the use case for this drone (medium-high budget media production) it's extremely unlikely that a person is going to be flying this drone without a spotter. Not having support for their own FPV googles on a $17,000 drone is kind of disappointing.

The RAW upgrade is still significantly cheaper than Arri's RAW codec. Not sure if the Arri price is still the same, but it used to be higher than the cost of this drone to unlock RAW on an Alexa. It was also just an image sequence rather than a wrapped container format.

Is this defending one rip-off by citing another?

Kind of, yeah, it is. In high end film/video gear, you know you're always getting over charged for anything. So this is one of those, just think, you could be paying more situations. Some of that pricing for hardware does tend to make a difference in quality in how rugged and durable something is to survive the rough and tumble environment of a production set. Can it survive the multiple remove from case, build, use, tear down, throw back in case, survive cases being tossed around like they are luggage loading onto an airline all in on day for each company move on the schedule and still be usable the next time you use it. This is software only type of pricing that is ridiculous

I love how some Arri shills down-modded that. Or are they DJI shills?

HMMmmmmmm

That was on the older Alexa's, there is no licence required to unlock raw on Arri cameras.

Do you know if they are still image sequences or have they chosen to wrap them up into an MXF or similar wrapper? It's been quite some time since I've been around Alexa footage.

Old guy story: the original RAW image sequence named the files by converting the time code to frame number and append that to the sequence name. So, midnight/0-hour timecode would be frame 0, and 23:59:59:23 would be whatever that number is that I'm too lazy to convert. However, if someone forgot to sync timecode to time-of-day as is pretty standard OR if someone was actually shooting late night and the clip was started before 23:59:59:23 the frame number conversion would see 00:00:00:00 flip around and dutifully use frame number 0. this would cause most NLE software that would recognize the image sequence to create a clip starting with frame 0 which was technically in the "middle" of the shot that starts in another clip based on standard importer logic. </rantOfAnOldDIT>

Assuming language based on location, with semi-infinite scrolling and the language selector on the bottom of the page is an annoying combination.

If only there was an HTTP header that would tell all websites which languages the user prefers.

What a crazy idea!

Eh I use a Hetzner server from their Virginia datacenter as a VPN but the DJI site still shows up in German for me. I don't see that problem anywhere else tbh.

If only there was a dedicated key on the keyboard that takes you down to the bottom of the page :)

Browsing on mobile sucks..

Doesn't help when you have infinite scrolling involved, keeps loading new stuff.

This particular page isn't too bad, at least with a fast connection everything loads in a couple of seconds, but there are worse examples out there.

What's with all the hate here for DJI?

Maybe I'm out of the loop, but the demo video with the choreographed, dynamic, repeatable waypoints, was wild. Seems incredibly powerful and novel

Their drones are pretty damn good, but I still hate all of the crap the DJI forces upon their users. This is pretty much a universal feeling towards DJI. They realized from the beginning that they had to force users into flight restrictions as the normal user would A) not know of flight restrictions, B) not care about them, C) break those restrictions at any time. So in order to keep their gear from being outright banned, they added these draconian restrictions to give the impression they were bending over backwards to making a product meant to comply with regulations. That's just a wee bit of the hate. The other shenanigans they do with their apps are not pleasant either.

great drones/gimbals/quality otherwise though <smacksforehead>

Is there really another option if you want to be able to sell drones to the masses at the mall?

No because otherwise the civil aviation authorities would ban them. I have a drone and a license and the restrictions are not draconian. They are the law.

They are draconian as I happen to live close enough to an airport that it will not allow me to fly in my own backyard. I have plenty of space to fly and I never even have to get above 6' to do it. I'm under tree canopy, so I couldn't even get high enough to be noticed. I get that there are asshats that will fly a drone in an airport because they're curious, think it'll be epic footage, and/or just stupid and reckless. There are also others that can enjoy the skill of flying the thing low altitude and doing turns around trees like they're pylons. Once again, idiots ruin it for those that are happy working within the regulations.

Are there any open source firmware or jailbreaks for DJI hardware?

8K@75fps is pretty nice.

Tangent: I've been using software called SVP (SmoothVideo Project) which uses AI/ML with a GPU (3090 in my case) to generate additional intermediate frames for video files, turning a ~24fps 4K Bluray rip into a ~48 fps or even higher. For scenes with a lot of action it's a noticeable improvement, everything feels smoother.

All that to say I hope that the industry starts moving to higher frame rates for film, I'd rather have native 4K 48hz content over 8k 24hz.

James Cameron and Peter Jackson were pushing high frame rate but critics absolutely hate it so I don't think it's going to happen.

James Cameron's usage of it was gravely flawed because he arbitrarily kept switching back and forth between 24 and 48 FPS from one shot to another in Avatar 2. There's absolutely no discernible pattern or motivation for the changes. WTF.

I wish 48 FPS were adopted widely so we could all just get used to it, because it simply and undeniably renders motion better.

Same to some extent with IMAX Blu-rays. It drives me mad when certain “blockbuster” IMAX disks shift aspect and film stock so quickly, just because… let’s use “IMAX” for some shots... It totally breaks the feel and flow of a movie for me when black bars and film grain suddenly start shifting about and changing. Either film and release it all in IMAX or don’t bother IMO.

This is what the Dark Knight does. The majority of the film is in whatever wide aspect ratio, but then for the "epic" IMAX shots the aspect ratio switched to a much more square aspect ratio. It was very noticeable in the theater when I saw it way back when.

I haven't seen Avatar 2, but this or something similar is something I notice all the time in films on DVDs, especially those originally for TV: the camera will cut to a long shot and everything becomes weirdly smooth until the camera cuts back again. Whether it's due to a change in film speed, frame rate or something else I can't work out, but I would imagine that these long distance shots are in fact library footage spliced into the film.

I think because while visually and technically better in the right hands (with multi hundred million $ budgets), it will almost always end up looking like a cheap soap opera in lesser hands - every imperfection in makeup, set and lighting becomes immediately obvious to even an uncritical eye. It’s kind of similar to an uncanny valley situation in VR, side note: I think ultimately AI on its current trajectory will finally push forwards and make VR accepted and feasible for entertainment in a multitude of ways...

For 4K or 8k HFR HDR live filming, you have to raise all your general production values by a really crazy amount for it not to look cheap and naff. Forget additional storage and transmission costs of the extra data, the actual day to day increases in production costs (and timelines) rapidly scales far beyond those, making such trivial things like storage a mere rounding error. Case in point - the most watched UK soap opera “Eastenders” saw the BBC go way over budget and spend £90m+ over many years just rebuilding all of their iconic sets so they could finally film it in basic HD. HFR 4K HDR would require an even bigger and more serious upgrade across the entire production, and a long term commitment to those bigger budgets, which the BBC have clearly decided is totally not feasible and also not worthwhile for a 3-4 times a week half hour soap opera. It won’t happen for most things because HD and certainly 4K is more than good enough for most normal people to enjoy video media on a screen up to around 100”’s at a sensible seating distance… So most entertainment can be done at a much lower cost and with way lower risk. The benefits just don’t and probably never will outweigh those factors.

2k is enough for most cinema purposes. https://www.yedlin.net/ResDemo/index.html

I do think 8K will make a big difference for VR though due to the extreme angle of view.

SmartTVs have had an interpreted frame rate mode for a long long time now. Die hards HATE HATE HATE it.

Diehards also think vinyl sounds better than CD, or at least many used to. (You know, because CD's are digital, which limits their dynamic range and frequency, whereas analog can be "perfect" in theory if you don't think too hard about it.) Some people are just allergic to anything that "improves quality". The reason these technologies exist is because _most people_ think it does improve quality. Haters gonna hate.

Writing off subjective assessments of modes of art as 'haters' seems like something a true hater might do. If you admit there is a qualitative difference then it seems obvious there would be mixed opinions about the different modes. Latest isn't always greatest.

Plenty of wrong here.

"CD's are digital, which limits their dynamic range"

No. In fact, some CD players used to come with discs intended to demonstrate the huge dynamic range of discs. My Sony portable came with Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms, one of the earlier full-digital releases; it was noted for its dynamic range.

Also, fake frames inserted into material shot at a lower frame rate can't "improve" quality. It's a gimmick. SHOOTING at a higher frame rate? Sure, that improves motion quality.

On a side note: Almost all the popular music you hear today on streaming services and on "remastered" albums has been destroyed with dynamic compression to make it "louder." Many engineers cite the early '90s as the peak of mastering quality. So don't act as though people objecting to "new" things are automatically wrong.

My father and I are listening through each CD in my late grandmother's collection. There's lots of truly excellent recordings from the 80s in there, from a time when record labels took the idea of 'digital quality' _really_ seriously. When I buy CDs for myself of my preferred genre of progressive rock, I make a point of searching for non-remastered CD copies (MusicBrainz is useful here), as the remasters inevitably limit the dynamic range. Another symptom of 'industrial disease'!

Absolutely! Don't get rid of those CDs!

The dynamic-compression problem is so severe, widespread, and yet under-recognized that I don't think music will ever recover. I have 45s from the '80s that sound way better than "remastered" digital releases today. And that has nothing to do with "vinyl vs. digital." It's about everyone having access to devices capable of incredible fidelity today, and nothing but ruined trash to play on them.

let's face it, there is a very large amount of music consumed on nothing more than earbud level of speaker. so large, that if they make it sound good on those and not so good on larger speaker systems, most people wouldn't know. that leaves a small number of very vocal people to bitch about it. however, these are the same people that believe you have to have gold plated cabling and all the other nonsense that audiophiles believe. so, if you mix for something that keeps >90% of people from bitching while cashing in all of those $9/month subscription fees, then sounds like a pretty decent bizplan.

even "room" sound is nothing but bookshelf sized speakers. i miss my towers with a 12"-18" sub, a 8"-10" mid, and a 1"-2" tweeter. i cried a bit having to get rid of those.

The problem is that dynamic compression doesn't help ANYONE. Earbuds, speakers, headphones... they all benefit from more dynamic range. Plus, if compressed shit were such a huge priority with people, it should have been added to the DEVICES.

And in fact... it was, decades ago. Even stock Ford CD players had a "Compress" button on them, in case you were listening to classical while driving in a noisy car. Easy solution that didn't ruin generations' worth of music.

The parenthetical that you seem to have skipped makes it seem like what you’ve quoted was actually intended as sarcasm.

If that's addressed to me, I don't know what you mean.

>> You know, because CD's are digital, which limits their dynamic range and frequency, whereas analog can be "perfect" in theory if you don't think too hard about it.

> No. In fact, some CD players used to come with discs intended to demonstrate the huge dynamic range of discs.

They appear to be mocking the belief that vinyls have more dynamic range based on the italic text.

Ha, well fair enough. I wasn't sure if the whole thing was sarcastic either. I guess we'll never know unless he comes back to elaborate.

It's not exactly sarcasm. From a purely theoretical perspective vinyl actually does have a higher dynamic range and wider frequency response than CD. The dynamic range of CD is fixed by its 16-bit format to ### decibels (I'm not going to bother looking it up). Whereas _in theory_ there is no limit to the dynamic range of vinyl except for the size of the atoms in the needle, which is much higher than a CD. In theory. Similarly, CD's are physically incapable of producing sounds with a frequency higher than 22kHz, whereas a vinyl record can in theory wiggle that needle much faster than that with atom-sized variations. But in reality this is absurd.

So I'm mocking the die-hards who think the old technology is better. Because even though the vinyl-lovers have a point in theory, in practice they're just wrong.

I assert the same is true here. I assert that most people prefer interpolation in both space and time to "preserving the original content". If you play a DVD on your 4k television, do you really want big perfectly rectangular blocks where the pixel boundaries are? And do you want those staying exactly the same for 33ms and then jumping to the next set of square blocks? Cuz that's the original content. I think most people would prefer to have something intelligently try to infer what the original content likely was before it got sampled (in space and time). Then you get smooth edges and smooth motion.

Feel free to disagree with me. Important people do - I know there are big names in cinema who think 24fps is the best for some reason and it hurts their extremely well trained eyes to see smoother motion. But any gamer will tell you that higher frame rates look more realistic and natural and just better. I like my tv's frame interpolation because it looks smooth and buttery to me.

But I assert my opinion (that having software interpolate both space and time) is what most people in the world prefer, which is why the tv makers do it.

They hate it because it looks like shit. I'm not against higher frame rates; I saw the Hobbit in 3-D 48 FPS and it was the coolest movie-going experience I've had.

But FAKE frames? Trash.

Certain company is trying to normalize interpolated frames in games which makes even less sense as it introduces latency but latency is like the main reason to want high frame rate in the first place. Almost exactly the same as SLI/crossfire. More frames overall but they come so late...

Not all games require super low latency. My TV's frame interpolation is pretty damn useful for certain Switch games that struggle to hit 30fps consistently. Breath of the Wild, while gorgeous, benefits quite a lot with smoothing turned on.

However, a game like Smash Bros would be unplayable with the extra latency.

Are you sure you're not confusing inserted generated frames to "we do some annoying things that, we think, make our 60Hz TV look like a 240Hz TV"?

Those things are incomparable.

either way, you are showing something to the viewer that is not part of the original image. whether that is the result of some AI's hallucination into what it thinks is there or some frame duplication/blending, it all means you've made up stuff that didn't exist to trick the mind into thinking it does.

Yes, but one is significantly better than the other. I don't mind a bunch of if statements inserting frames in most cases, but manufacturers can shove their "Effective Refresh Rate" you know where.

> 8K@75fps is pretty nice

Apparently only when using their RAW format which costs $979 for a license.

https://store.dji.com/product/dji-inspire-3-raw-license

This is not only not relevant, it isn't AI either. Optical flow and motion interpolation have been around for over 25 years, but now people are mistakenly calling them "AI".

With a beautiful full frame sensor, lens mount and the carbon fibre bodied lenses all there, it would be a shame if they didn't start making a really light camera body with them, something on the Leica-Fujifilm spectrum (Although I guess they have that thanks to their Hasselblad acquisition). It would likely have great potential as a travel camera if they pushed the lightweight aspect

Cannot wait to see 8K drone footage from Ukraine

Why would they use this over the much cheaper mavic?

On average the commercial drones in Ukraine survive 3 missions. I doubt anyone would spend the price of 5 mavic drones just to have more pixels at a trench.

Source? If you are talking averaging suicide drones that have 1 mission and other types, then maybe... But all those drones that we see on YouTube dropping granades, it will be quite shocking to have them shot down so quickly.

I got it from this video [1].

[1] https://youtu.be/AlpZf1hpQYM?t=2776

I wonder if there's any information out of Ukraine about how effective shotguns loaded with birdshot are against drones. Probably not data you're ever going to get anywhere else.

Birdshot is very effective against plastic propellers and soft side lipo batteries, which are both virtually universal critical components on FPV quadcopters.

3 flights actually seems pretty good given the conditions-- I suspect they aren't walking out to fetch any crashed or malfunctioning devices in an active combat zone and the analog video signals are exceptionally easy to interfere with.

Sure, but how does the effective range of birdshot compare to useful flight altitudes? How difficult is compensating for drift and elevation? What's the ideal shot size and choke for killing drones? If someone with the best anti-drone load out sees a drone, how long and how many rounds does it take on average to down one?

"The best anti-drone load out" in the context of FPV quadcopters is going to be a radio transmitter configured to overwhelm their video or hijack control through frequency hopping attacks. The marginal cost of taking down the drone is virtually zero, radio jamming provides a continuous wide area of denial without user input and can't be overwhelmed by a swarm of attacking drones like a point defense turret could be.

The RC control channel is unencrypted and the video feed is analog. If I'm being attacked by FPV drones I'll take a freshly certified ham radio operator over a world champion duck hunter any day.

The RC control channel is unencrypted and the video feed is analog.

This is completely wrong, as long as you're talking about the most common drones in Ukraine, the DJI Mavic Mini and Mini 2.

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1607790/FULLTEXT...

While I'm sure there are some DJIs being used for recon, my understanding of the situation is that the overwhelming majority of drones used as guidance / delivery systems for munitions are hobbyist style DIY fpv drones. They are less expensive, have significantly higher payload carry capability and can be constructed from more generally available and interchangeable components[1][2][3]

For these types of drones all the consumer and FOSS control links are unencrypted and critically vulnerable to frequency hopping hijacking attacks [4]

The video and control for all of these systems (including DJI) can be disrupted by jamming consumer and hobbyist frequencies; 300-975mhz, 2.4ghz, and 5.8ghz.

As with any information coming from active modern war zones, the incidence of misinformation, disinformation and propaganda will be high.

[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2023/03/24/russia...

[2]https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2023/03/24/...

[3]https://dronedj.com/2023/03/01/ukraine-reportedly-assembles-...

[4]https://www.vox.com/2016/10/28/13406082/hackers-control-cons...

Source? Anecdotally I've seen (on the internet) most are used for recon purposes, 3 times is awfully wasteful.

Check this video [1] of Perun at the timestamped location.

[1] https://youtu.be/AlpZf1hpQYM?t=2776

Electronic warfare would probably have a mode to allow a drone to go inside its “kill range” then activate the hammer to down the drone. Likely could do an off for 5 min on for 20 seconds or just enough

I mean those guys are drone nerds too. Maybe it won't be a ton of footage coming out of there but there will be some of those guys using these. Besides that, I used to fly aerial mapping missions over afghanistan and the same reason we needed high res images super fast (as opposed to tasking satellites) for a low level op coming in a few days to see ingress points, chokepoints, hlz sites fresh, etc. They definitely have a role there but not the every day sort of recce the grunts are using them for.

"Survives 3 missions" is more than a mobik in a hot zone.

God I've seen the drone footage on Reddit sometimes, I don't like suddenly having my Reddit feed have videos of Russian men shooting themselves in the head to avoid dying via being blown up by a drone dropped grenade. Absolutely awful stuff. I'm not sure when Reddit became Ogrish.

Unfortunately it always has been.

I hardly think your reddit feed is suddenly full of that.

/r/all is a thing and some people use it.

"full" is your word

Why? Mine certainly suddenly became that.

The reddit frontpage algorithm very quickly pigeonholes users without accounts.

It's when I go to /r/all to see what the broader Reddit is up to. Basically every day there's war footage (at least marked nsfw), the other Reddit front page was featuring a video of a Ukrainian soldier being beheaded by some Russians. Also noticing more random videos of fights and people getting beat up. I don't remember this from Reddit even a year ago.

The worst I've seen on reddit's front page (on mobile) was an auto-played video of a kid playing with a gun, accidentally shooting her brother in the head, then taking her own life without hesitation. It happened within seconds seconds of autoplay. But if you try to open an NSFW link, like that one was, the site blocks it and tells you to use the app to see NSFW content. Reddit sucks.

Huh, that does sound kinda different from what I regularly experienced a few years ago. I guess it’s just another reason to not visit Reddit.

I’m a daily Reddit user, and I don’t think I’ve seen gore there … ever?

you're just not looking in the right places. There have been some traumatic posts from ukraine I've seen on /r/combatfootage and other subreddits. stuff I really wish I hadn't seen at all. People with their face half blown off by grenades, a few guys who drown slowly after getting hit by a drone dropped grenade while in river, a man who crawls out of a covered area thats been grenade dropped, corpses behind him burning, his arms not working and pale from bloodloss.

It's there.

You really stepped on the gas in describing those horrible things in detail.

> stuff I really wish I hadn't seen

Or hadn't read.

Your choice to visit "/combatfootage" doesn't match your wish not to have seen combat footage. What did you expect? Non-combat footage?

We shouldn't advocate for censorship. We should advocate for more common sense on the user's side.

> Or hadn't read.

I never watch gore and shock videos, but I've read about plenty of them and even the descriptions of what's in them haunts me, even after years and years I can't get them out of my head. This thread has added a couple of those now...

>Your choice to visit "/combatfootage" doesn't match your wish not to have seen combat footage. What did you expect? Non-combat footage?

I watched a lot of combatfootage previously that wasn't as traumatic but the use of small drones in ukraine with grenades has upped the level of very close range footage to a new level in ukraine.

What I’m saying is if you just go to the Reddit.com/r/all page, which if you’ve curated to avoid all the negative subreddits, you’ll now get /r/combatfootage and people fighting included in this feed. I’d like to be able to check out the broader Reddit without being subjected to even the titles of these horrific pages.

At the same time I do think freedom of speech is important, I think everyone who wants to should be able to see ISIS beheading videos or whatever so we know what barbarism is possible and to fight against it. But that doesn’t mean I want to see it all the time.

I just check out r/all sometimes and it’s showing up at least a few times a week on there. I’m not actively going to those subreddits. I’m finding myself going there less and less as it’s repulsive. Interestingly Twitter seems to have gotten more interesting lately.

Let me add some more hate vs DJI (they deserve it).

Two years ago my drone was stolen. DJI didn't provide any help in locating the drone, nor in locking it. I wasted hours contacting local authorities, DJI representatives, helpful strangers on online forums, etc, with absolutely no result.

It is crazy that in 2021 someone could steal a drone and get away with it.

FYI, you might want to know that every drone above 250 grams has a beacon, and DJI can access its location at any time when the drone is in operation.

What's the utility of having the propellors be able to go up and down relative to the body? Usually they show the propellors way above the camera, which makes sense to keep them out of view. But one of the shots shows the arms way down with the propellors very close to the camera. Why?

Perhaps different flight modes, with the "camera low" case having a much high moment of inertia, so more stable flight? The "camera high" case should reduce the moment of inertia, fore more nimble movement. For rotation, moment of inertia acts as "mass" does for a linear movement [1].

I don't think you would want to zip through obstacles in a "camera low" scenario.

1. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mi.html

Basically, this mechanics is the drone's landing gear. When on the ground, the arms pivot down, allowing it to touch down with the camera staying above ground level, protected from impacts. When airborne, the arms pivot up, opening up a 360° field of view for the camera. DJI have done this since the original Inspire 1 and it seems to work pretty well.

From the video:

> By having the landing gear down, an 80-degree upward gimbal angle becomes available, with no obstructions in the FOV.

they showed a sick pan up gimbal scene of an elevator.

Do these things still require your mobile phone number to use?

I bought a cheap android phone to drive my drone specifically due to the mandatory chinese spyware app.

Does your phone not have any US spyware apps? Whom are you trying to protect yourself from, the country that has jurisdiction on you or the country that can't even extradite you.

Maybe he's trying to protect himself from a totalitarian dictatorship (that can do whatever it wants) and not from a democratically elected government, whose authority is constrained by independent courts, free media, fair elections and so on.

> a democratically elected government, whose authority is constrained by independent courts, free media, fair elections and so on.

Yeah yeah, something, something Iraq prisoners, Guantanamo bay.

But seriously, again, China can do jackshit to the person even if they have his entire life data, vs US if it finds certain word or conversation or searches related to certain term. I think it's foolish that people are afraid of Chinese spyware rather than being paranoid about every spyware.

I recently got a DJI RS 3 and was deeply offended to discover it "supports up to five uses without activation. After that, activation is required for further use."

Activation is done through a smartphone app you must install that requests your location information and then you must create an account on DJI's website to complete the process.

I deeply resented the whole process and I'd bet the DJI Inspire 3 is just as obnoxious.

Are there open source firmwares for these drones?

The obvious question is how effective at carrying small improvised explosives is it?

Pretty sure "fancy camera quadcopter" is the wrong quadcopter to be using in a warzone where things tend to get blown up.

Perhaps, unless those fancy cameras improve targeting capabilities in a meaningful way

You can already get the FPV camera on the Inspire standalone (looks like the O3), but I doubt it will improve targeting capabilities much. The FPV link is 720p, unless they changed something, but I wouldn't be surprised if they use analog cameras which cost $10.

Specs on the linked site say the FPV camera and live feed have been upgraded from 480p/30 on the Inspire 2 to 1080p/60 on the 3.

Oh, nice, I guess they use the DJI FPV system with Goggles 2, I forgot that was 1080p.

Maybe not targeting but the follow up BDA reports. Instead of having to send in a second drone to see the bomb damage, the same system can be used! Also, no need to wait for timing of a satellite pass over either.

This is a class too big for that, you're better off with a Mavic or even a Mini for lower cost, better stealth and simpler one-man operation.

> This is a class too big for that,

Allow me to introduce the machine gun carrying drone used in Ukraine:

https://twitter.com/clashreport/status/1616369468069789696

Is that really used? I would assume the accuracy is beyond horrible. That being said, if it is stupid and it works, anything goes.

does it have to be accurate? if you want to just use it for suppressing fire, i bet it's pretty effective. it's probably effective as a psychological deterrent too.

My experience with DJI drones is that once you put anything on them, the tuning of their flight controllers leads to substantially worse flight times, stability, and overall safety.

I know the Mini 3 can carry a naked GoPro without struggling too much, so a mavic might be able to carry a couple hundred grams with decent performance. But the flight characteristics go out the window pretty quickly, so I suspect you couldn’t carry much explosives on these things.

I have no idea how much is needed. Maybe a small amount is fine.

I bought a DJI2 which uploaded all my videos to a cloud service and didn't have the option to disable cloud backup. No thank you!

I bought the small foldable dji mavic when it first came out. I could not fly it with the provided controller without installing an app, creating a login, and activating the drone. I sent it back immediately.

Later I found out HOW MANY different sites the app would have connected to when I installed it. This kind of thing is horrendous, but businesses have normalized the practice.

The API is out now so you can use it with third-party apps, just FYI.

so you can use a dji mavic out-of-the-box without asking permission from DJI or someone else?

Expensive, very cool looking tool. I wish I could watch literally any of the footage but it seems to be hosted on a trash can of a server.

I couldn’t even get the 1080p footage to buffer

Is this a drone or a drone-as-a-service with a one-time payment? Am I required to be dependent DJI servers and software to use it? What happens if the company goes bust? Will I be able to use thirdparty software to continue using it?

If their answer is no, then so is mine.

Edit: Downvote me if you want, but professionals want reliable tools that they can depend on for a long time and account for this when making their purchase decision.

What's the current DJI Android compatibility?

Still requires an external APK download. They want something that Google doesn't want to allow or is restricting.

Let's be honest: it kind of rocks

This page is so distracting. The whole time I'm trying to read their pitch there's stuff moving around everywhere pulling my eye to that. I wasn't going to buy it anyway so I'm just going to go ahead and close it now.

NAB show baby! Can’t wait for more.

We really need to ban the import of these things with how important they are to future war.

Do you mean export

Probably not, since DJI is a Chinese company. Don't really think we can ban their export. Oh as much as the US would love to have that kind of control. All it can realistically do is ban what can be imported into its own borders.

and exported from allies countries. Hence the whole hullabaloo around semiconductors right now. Makes you wonder what they threaten the Dutch and Japanese with to get them to comply against their better interests though.

It is not in the better interest of the Dutch or the Japanese to enable China to take over the chip production market. In this case the Dutch and the Japanese would both be incredible losers as China backs Russian invasion in Europe and the invasion of Taiwan.

You're spreading a propaganda narrative, one designed to try to convince those who are Dutch or Japanese to act against their better interest in order to enable China to grow more powerful.

The status quo was much more beneficial for each of these nations. They got to maintain a leading edge in their respective parts of the supply chain and China kept growing as a customer and buying more.

Essentially what will happen now is China will never buy from these nations when they become self-sufficient. The sanctions are willing state-backed Chinese competitors for all of these companies into existence where there either was none before or they weren't competitive. That will all change now, within a decade or so China will have caught up and now you will have an absolute powerhouse that is fully self-sufficient.

Essentially the US and her allies traded a situation where they could perpetually keep China a generation behind for a situation where China might fall behind pretty rapidly for a few years but will roar back and likely be more competitive than they have ever been.

I fail to see how this isn't against the interests of the Dutch, Japanese or for that matter the South Koreans and Taiwanese.

> They got to maintain a leading edge in their respective parts of the supply chain and China

Long term mutually beneficial relationships with China are massive lies and they will slowly steal any tech you sell them until you're rendered obsolete.

Is this the one which is supposed to leave whole camera crew without jobs?

I think it's more adding a tool for them to use. Instead of moving a camera along a cable, you can move the drone over a virtual cable. That's pretty cool, but I would guess you still need the same operators.

this one supports 3 camera operators controlling it live from different locations.

Jagga Jagga, Badaboom.

Jagga Jagga! Badaboom.

Looks awesome but the fact they copied the same webdesign style of Apple puts me off. Why not come up with their own?

Most of the times I see that layout it has to be from a Chinese, or at least Asian company. Xiaomi, for sure. And I think Asus is doing this too for some ROG notebooks.

interesting, I looked at xiami website and indeed it looks like a copy of apple's webdesign... but the old one (:

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