I was teaching someone to fly in a simulator (FPV SkyDive) and they were very confused by the way you turn. I certainly remember finding it unnatural, but now I’m used to it: With the drone pitched forward slightly for normal flight, you would coordinate a yaw right and roll right to make a smooth turn.
Is there a reason it’s not set up so that pitch/roll attitude are maintained as you yaw? So if you’re pitched forward 30 degrees and the horizon is level, when you yaw those both stay the same? Are there moves that are easier using the existing standard? Or on the other hand, are there folks who have changed their setup (either FC settings or tx mixes) for different behavior?
Thanks for any insights!
Yes, Acro mode.
Here’s a visualization. In 3D modeling, you can apply transforms in different orders. So if you have a drone that’s pitched 30 degrees forward (x rotation):
If you want to yaw it around (z rotation) and you’re using YZX rotation order you get the Acro mode behavior, where pure yaw spins the quad in the current plane of its arms:
But if you’re using XYZ rotation order, you end up turned around but still nose-down 30 degrees:
It could be that I am a huge gaming nerd and picked up this hobby due to a Reddit comment, read by an AI voice from a YouTube video, but at the start I kind of treated it like FPS games, where you “pitch” up and down to look around. I flipped it to learn it the “correct” way, had to mentally adjust to instead of “looking up” I “pull back the lever to gain height”
But having Yaw behave any different would be weird, not only considering how helicopters and planes work, but also how much harder some cinematic shots would be