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3D Flight Replay

The 3D flight replay is an interactive visualization of your drone's complete flight path, rendered in three-dimensional space over a map. It is available on every analyzed flight and allows you to review the trajectory, attitude, and telemetry of your aircraft at any point during the mission.

Accessing the 3D Replay

After your log finishes processing, open the flight from the Logs page. The 3D replay viewer is loaded automatically in the upper section of the flight analysis view. No additional steps are required to generate the visualization — the flight path data is pre-computed as part of the analysis pipeline.

What is Visualized

Flight Path

The full GPS-tracked flight path is drawn as a continuous line over the map, with color coding to indicate different flight modes (Stabilize, AltHold, Loiter, Auto, RTL, and others). This allows you to immediately see the structure of the mission — takeoff location, waypoint sequences, and landing site — and identify any segment where the flight mode changed unexpectedly.

Animated Drone Model

An animated 3D model of the drone moves along the flight path in real-time playback. The model reflects the actual attitude (roll, pitch, yaw) recorded in your log at each point in time, so you can observe the aircraft's orientation during maneuvers, wind-compensation events, and approach phases.

Telemetry HUD Overlay

While the replay plays, a heads-up display (HUD) overlay shows real-time telemetry values synchronized to the playback position:

| HUD Element | Data Source | |---|---| | Battery voltage and current draw | BAT telemetry channel | | GPS satellite count | GPS telemetry channel | | Groundspeed | GPS-derived speed | | Barometric altitude | BARO telemetry channel | | Flight mode | MODE messages | | Flight duration and progress | ATT timeline |

Altitude Profile

The flight path is rendered with altitude-based coloring, making it immediately visible where the aircraft climbed, cruised at altitude, descended, and hovered. This is particularly useful for verifying that a survey or inspection mission maintained the correct altitude throughout.

Playback Controls

  • Play / Pause — Start or stop the animated replay from the current position.
  • Zoom — Use scroll wheel or pinch gesture to zoom in and out on the map.
  • Rotate and tilt — Click and drag to orbit around the flight path. Right-click and drag to tilt the camera angle.
  • Reset view — Returns the camera to the default top-down view centered on the flight path.

Map Style

The replay renders over a base map. You can switch between available map styles from the viewer controls to best match your mission environment.

Data Accuracy and Limitations

The 3D replay is constructed from the GPS track logged by your flight controller. The accuracy of the visualization is therefore bounded by the GPS receiver's accuracy during the flight — typically 1–3 meters horizontal with a clear sky view and low HDOP.

For flights with GPS outages or EKF failover events, portions of the flight path where GPS data was unavailable will be interpolated. These segments are still rendered but may not precisely reflect the actual flight trajectory.

Altitude in the replay is primarily derived from barometric altitude (BARO messages), not GPS altitude, as barometric altitude is more accurate for relative altitude measurement. Absolute altitude accuracy depends on your ground-level pressure calibration at the time of flight.

Use Cases

Post-Crash Review

After an unexpected incident or flyaway event, the 3D replay allows you to reconstruct the aircraft's behavior visually. Combined with the flight health score and the forensic PDF report, the replay provides the visual component of a complete incident timeline.

For crash investigations, pay particular attention to:

  • The flight mode active at the time of the incident (visible from path coloring and HUD)
  • Any altitude deviations that do not match commanded behavior
  • The final seconds of the flight where trajectory changes may correspond to failsafe activation

Route and Mission Verification

Before sharing mission results with a client or regulatory body, review the 3D replay to verify that the planned route was flown accurately. You can confirm that waypoints were reached, survey transects are properly spaced, and that the aircraft did not deviate significantly from the planned path.

Client and Team Reporting

The 3D replay provides an intuitive, non-technical way to demonstrate mission execution to stakeholders who may not be familiar with telemetry data. During presentations or client debriefs, you can play back the flight to show exactly where the aircraft flew, at what altitude, and in what mode.

The downloadable PDF report includes a static overview of the flight path for documentation purposes in situations where an interactive viewer is not available.

Guest Mode 3D Replay

Guest users (those who upload without an account) have access to the 3D replay viewer, with flight data processed locally in their browser rather than in the cloud. Local processing supports the same visualization capabilities but does not produce a downloadable PDF report. See Getting Started for a comparison of guest and authenticated capabilities.

Next: Forensic PDF Report — download and share a professional, printable analysis of your flight.

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