I know this is off-topic, but it is posted in the Lounge so please forgive me.
I was reading a DJI forum last week and ran across references to a program called Litchi. Litchi is an US$22 alternative for DJI Go software that allows you to do the intelligent flight modes and such. The really cool thing about Litchi is its ability to intelligently and easily pre-program flight missions via way-points and points of interest from your PC/Mac (or on your Android / iPad / iPhone device). You can then save them, share them, edit them, and of course run them at your leisure. And its not just for Mavic Pro owners. Litchi is compatible with: Mavic 2 (Zoom/Pro), Mavic (Air/Pro), Phantom 4 (Standard/Advanced/Pro/ProV2), Phantom 3 (Standard/4K/Advanced/Professional), Inspire 1 (X3/Z3/Pro/RAW), Inspire 2 and Spark.
One of the really cool things about the mission pre-programming is that you do the work over a Google Earth image of your environment and then can check the draft mission in Google Earth Pro to make sure you are going to clear trees, buildings, electrical lines, etc.
For a practical example, I was in Charleston this past weekend and wanted to capture some video of the lovely city. I scoped out the shoreline quickly and drafted a flight and camera plan in about 10 minutes using just my iPad.
If I had Google Earth Pro handy at the time, I could have seen that I set my initial and final waypoints too high and would have dropped them 50 feet:
I walked to a quiet spot in Battery Park where I set my initial and final waypoints and pressed the "Play" button. It uploaded the mission to my Mavic and it immediately took off, flew the very long mission just as instructed and returned control to my RC controller upon completion. All the flight details are uploaded to the Mavic so it does not require connectivity while operating. (Yes, this could violate several operation rules, but it makes for a nice failsafe/recovery.) Litchi does include the ability to interrupt a pre-programmed flight in progress just in case you hear a light aircraft approaching or see that you miscalculated the height of those high-tension powerlines(!).
Here's a sped up version of the flight path. It took 19 minutes to fly, most of it over the water. It landed with 30% battery life left. Apologies for the occassional jerkiness and compression flaws in the compiled video. The source looks great, but my video editing software chews things up when trying to speed up the source. Controlling the flight path this accurately while simultaneously controlling the camera angle is simply not something I could have done in real time. If you are a DJI quad owner and any of this interests you, check it out!
-David