DJI-style camera drones for DayZ. Pair a controller, fly from the drone's camera with a full flight HUD, plan waypoint routes on the map, orbit or track targets, drop grenades, deliver cargo, and fight back with an anti-drone jammer.

• Fly from the camera feed with a DJI Fly-style HUD: battery and Return to Home markers, signal, heading tape, laser rangefinder, minimap, warnings.
• Three flight modes (Cine, Normal, Sport), cruise control, obstacle avoidance, a 100 m altitude limit and a 1 km control range.
• Real failsafes. Smart Return to Home on low battery, forced landing on critical battery, and a configurable action when the signal is lost or jammed.
• Waypoint planner on the map, with altitude, speed, gimbal, hover, heading and an action per waypoint, a point of interest, patrol loops and a saved route library.
• Orbit and ActiveTrack. Lock the crosshair on a point to circle it, or on a player or vehicle to follow it, overhead included.
• Motion alerts. The drone warns you when something moves in front of its camera, even while you're on foot.
• Grenade payload. Drop it, or detonate it where the drone hovers.
• Cargo drone that lowers, lands or air-drops a parcel box. Hard landings damage what's inside.
• Anti-Drone System that detects drones within 500 m and jams them within 350 m.
• Group map marks on servers that run Demo_Group_Map.

The numbers on this page are the defaults. Servers can change most of them.

Items

Drones, controllers and the Anti-Drone System are repaired with an Electronic Repair Kit.

Getting started

1. Attach a Drone Battery to the drone and a 9V battery to the controller.
2. Put the drone on the ground.
3. Pair: with the controller in your hands, look at the drone and hold Use (left mouse by default) on Pair with Drone for 3 seconds. Both items get the same number: Drone #123 and [PAIRED #123] Drone Controller.
4. Fly: with the paired controller in your hands, use Fly Drone. Your view moves to the drone's camera. The drone can be anywhere in range. If it's far away, the feed shows Connecting to aircraft until it loads in (up to 15 seconds).
5. Press E to start the motors and take off. F1 lists every key.
6. Esc leaves the feed.

Pairing

• One controller pairs with one drone. The last pairing wins: pairing either item to something new breaks its old pair. Anyone with a controller can pair a drone they find, including yours.
• Pairing survives server restarts and moving the items between inventories.
• Unpair from Drone (at the drone, 2 seconds) breaks the pair.
• Clear Drone Pairing (controller in hands, 2 seconds) clears the controller when the drone is lost.
• A destroyed drone loses its pairing for good.

Who can fly

Fly Drone works when all of these are true:

• The paired controller is in your hands and its 9V battery has charge.
• The drone sits on the ground or is already flying, not in an inventory, in hands or in a container.
• The drone isn't ruined, and nobody else is flying it.
• You aren't wearing switched-on night vision, unless the server allows it.

You can start from standing, crouched or prone. If something is wrong, the reason shows on screen.

In the feed

• Your character stays where they are, holding the controller, and can't move or use anything else.
• Taking health or shock damage, going unconscious, or dying drops you out of the feed.
• Drone messages show on the HUD. Out of the feed they show on a small status card. The mod never writes to chat.

Leaving the feed

• Press Esc. A drone in manual flight brakes to a hover and holds there. Routes, Return to Home, landing, Orbit and ActiveTrack carry on without you.
• The drone keeps flying while you walk around. Its link runs through the controller, not your camera.
• While you hold the paired controller, the status card shows what the drone is doing, route progress, battery, distance and motion.
• Use Fly Drone again to get back in.
• A drone can't be picked up while its motors run.

Controls

All keys can be rebound in the game's controls settings, under Demo Drones.

Pause (T) does what fits the moment. In manual flight it brakes to a hover and turns cruise off. It pauses or resumes a route, cancels Return to Home or a landing, and ends Orbit or ActiveTrack.

Flying

Flight modes

• X cycles the mode. Holding Left Shift flies in Sport for as long as you hold it.
• Cine accelerates gently and Sport hard. Sport has no obstacle sensing.
• Letting go of the sticks brakes to a hover.
• Cruise control (F), manual flight only: the drone keeps its speed when you let go of the sticks. Pause brakes. An obstacle ahead switches cruise off. Cruising costs 20% more battery for movement.
• The drone can't fly higher than 100 m above the ground.

Take-off and landing

• E starts the motors and climbs to about 1.5 m. That spot becomes the home point.
• Q in the air lands where the drone is. It descends at 2.5 m/s, slowing to 0.8 m/s for the last 4 m, and you can steer sideways to pick a spot. Within 1 m of the ground, Q stops the motors instead.
• The motors stop by themselves on touchdown.
• A drone with someone standing on it won't take off. Someone jumping on in flight stops the motors.

Battery and flight time

• Climbing costs a little extra. The battery can't be removed while the motors run.
• The battery bar on the HUD shows a yellow marker for the battery needed to fly home and a red marker at the critical level.
• Low battery warns at 30%, or earlier when the battery only just covers the trip home.
• Smart Return to Home: when the battery is down to what the trip home needs (plus a 5% reserve) and the drone is more than 20 m from home, it flies home by itself. Pause cancels it.
• Critical battery (10%): the drone lands where it is. This can't be cancelled.
• A battery that runs flat in the air stops the motors and the drone falls.
• The controller's 9V only drains while someone is in the feed. A full one lasts about 3.5 hours of flying.

Signal and range

• Signal is measured from the paired controller: from you while you carry it, or from where it lies if you put it down. It's 100% next to the controller and falls to 0% at 1000 m. A controller with a flat 9V has no signal.
• The HUD warns below 25% (weak signal) and below 10% (max distance).
• Jamming weakens the signal further (Anti-Drone System).
• With the link lost, the drone ignores the sticks and every command (No signal - command not received). After 3 seconds the failsafe runs:

When the signal comes back the HUD says Signal restored - press Pause to take control. Pause cancels the failsafe.

Return to Home

Hold R, or let a failsafe trigger it. The drone:

1. climbs straight up to 60 m above the ground, or stays higher if it already is. Within 20 m of home it only climbs to 5 m, and within 5 m it simply lands.
2. flies home nose first at 6 m/s (cargo drone 5 m/s).
3. lands on the home point and stops the motors.

Under a roof, bridge or tree it can't climb, so it flies out low and slow (3 m/s) and climbs once the sky is clear. The sticks do nothing during Return to Home, and Pause cancels it. The home point is where the motors last started.

Obstacle avoidance

• Manual flight in Cine and Normal: the drone brakes before an obstacle in the direction you're pushing. Every other direction stays free, so you can steer around it. It doesn't brake for rising ground, and it's off below about 1 m and in Sport mode.
• Autopilot (routes, Return to Home, take-off, Orbit, ActiveTrack): the drone climbs over obstacles ahead and won't climb into anything overhead.
• How far it looks ahead grows with speed.
• O switches it off and on for this drone until the next server restart. Off means nothing stops the drone hitting things. Servers can switch it off for everyone.

Damage

• A drone has 40 health. A collision costs 4 health for every m/s of speed lost (above 3 m/s), so hitting a wall at full Normal speed destroys it. Falling into the ground faster than 16 m/s wrecks it too.
• A destroyed drone falls, drops its pilot out of the feed and loses its pairing. An attached grenade stays on it by default. Servers can make it drop or go off instead.

The flight HUD

• Top: battery bar with the home and critical markers. Below it, a status pill (In Flight, Returning to Home, Low Battery, Strong Interference and so on), the drone's number, flight mode, cruise, obstacle avoidance, motion alerts, bottom light, signal bars, drone health and battery. Under that, a heading tape with home (H) and the next waypoint.
• Centre: reticle and laser rangefinder: range, height above sea level, and the distance and bearing from you to the spot. Orbit centre marker or ActiveTrack brackets. Orange diamonds where motion was seen.
• Right: zoom (1x to 4x) and gimbal angle (+20° to straight down).
• Bottom left: north-up minimap with home, you, the route and the camera's view, plus distance from home (D), height above ground (H) and horizontal and vertical speed (H.S, V.S).
• Bottom: route progress, position and payload.
• Warnings appear as a banner: obstacles, altitude limit, max distance, target obscured, low or critical battery, link lost with the failsafe that will run.

Waypoint routes

The planner

Press M in the feed. The flight carries on underneath (the drone holds a neutral stick). M, Esc or CLOSE returns to the camera.

On the map:

• WAYPOINT turns click-to-add on and off. Click the map to add a waypoint after the selected one, or at the end.
• Click a waypoint to select it. Drag it to move it.
• Right-click a waypoint to delete it. With WAYPOINT on, right-clicking empty map deletes the last one.
• POI: the next click places the point of interest. Esc cancels.
• CENTER centres the map on the drone.
• The map also shows your controller range, the drone, home, the route already on the drone, the length of each leg, and recent motion.

Route settings

Selected waypoint

Heading and gimbal apply on the leg flying to that waypoint. New waypoints copy the selected (or last) one's altitude, gimbal and heading. UP and DOWN reorder, DELETE removes.

The footer shows the number of waypoints, the length and the flight time. It also estimates the battery needed against what the drone has left, in green, yellow or red. For a patrol it shows battery per lap and how many laps fit before low battery.

Flying a route

• GO sends the route to the drone and starts it. From the ground, the drone starts its motors, climbs to 10 m (or to the first waypoint's altitude if that's lower) and sets off.
• Altitudes are above the ground under the drone. The route follows the terrain, not buildings. Obstacle avoidance climbs over things in the way, but set waypoints near buildings above the rooftops.
• Route speed never exceeds Normal speed. A waypoint counts as reached within 2.5 m, at its altitude give or take 4 m.
• Touching the sticks pauses the route (yaw alone doesn't). Pause resumes it, flying on to the waypoint it was heading for.
• Leave the feed and the route keeps flying. The status card shows progress.
• When a route is on the drone, the planner's live panel shows its state, with PAUSE / RESUME / CANCEL RTH / START, END ROUTE and RTH buttons.
• Pin (C) in flight adds a waypoint to the planner at the drone's position, height above ground, compass heading (as Fixed) and gimbal angle. It's a quick way to record a route by flying it.

Patrol

When finished: Patrol (loop) needs at least 2 waypoints. After the last waypoint the drone flies back to the first and goes round again. It keeps looping until you pause or end it, Smart Return to Home triggers on low battery, or a failsafe fires.

Route library

• Type a name (up to 24 characters) and press SAVE. Saving under an existing name overwrites that route.
• The library lists your saved routes for this map. Load one or delete it there. NEW starts an empty route.
• The server keeps up to 20 routes per player on each map.

Orbit and ActiveTrack

Put the crosshair on something and press V:

• A player or vehicle starts ActiveTrack. The drone follows it at the distance and angle it had when you locked on. You can lock within 200 m. A near miss locks the closest visible target inside a small cone, which narrows as you zoom.
• Anything else starts an Orbit around that point at 3 m/s, at your current distance. It must be within 150 m, and the radius is kept between 5 and 150 m.

The camera stays on the target and the sticks change the shot:

• Overhead: in ActiveTrack at the closest distance (5 m), hold Forward for 1 second. The drone moves right over the target and follows from above, nose along its travel. Pull back to drop behind it again.
• ActiveTrack ends when the target dies, goes beyond 200 m, or stays out of sight for 3 seconds. The HUD warns TARGET OBSCURED - LOCK WILL DROP first.
• V again or Pause ends Orbit or ActiveTrack and the drone hovers. Started during a route, it leaves the route paused, and Pause resumes it.
• Needs the motors running. It can't start during Return to Home, landing or take-off: press Pause first.
• Tracked players show as Player, never by name.

Motion alerts

A flying drone watches for movement in front of its camera:

• A 90° cone around the nose, out to 150 m by day and 50 m at night. Anything right under the drone always counts.
• It needs a clear line of sight, so roofs and treelines hide you.
• Only movement counts (faster than 0.8 m/s). Standing still, you're invisible.
• It sees players (not the pilot), infected, animals, vehicles and other flying drones.

The alert is a beep and a message such as Motion 140 m NE or Motion: 3 contacts, nearest 80 m SW. Nothing is identified. The HUD and planner map put an orange diamond where each contact was last seen moving, never where it is now. Diamonds fade after 5 seconds. Out of the feed, the message goes to your status card and the beep plays where you stand.

• A contact alerts again only after 60 seconds still or out of sight. There's at most one alert every 5 seconds.
• B switches alerts off and on for this drone until the next server restart.
• A route set to On motion: Stop & watch pauses when something moves. The drone holds position and points the camera at the spot, and the sticks circle, close in or climb as in an Orbit. Pause resumes the route. V ends the watch and leaves the route paused.

Grenade payload

• The drone's payload slot takes any vanilla grenade: M67, RGD-5, flashbang or smoke.
• G drops it with the pin pulled. It falls with the drone's momentum, so lead moving targets.
• Holding H sets it off immediately, right under the drone.
• Both need the motors running. Only grenades can be dropped or detonated.
• A Drop payload waypoint drops it on a route.
• A grenade on the mount covers the bottom light.

Cargo drone

The cargo drone carries a Drone Cargo Box (4x4 of space) under it instead of a grenade. Clip the box on in its Cargo slot. A box can't go inside another box.

• G releases the box wherever the drone is. It falls with the drone's momentum.
• Waypoint actions, available only when the paired drone is a cargo drone:
  • Land & release: the drone descends over the waypoint until the box is just above whatever is below (ground, roof or floor), sets it down, climbs back to the waypoint altitude and carries on. If it gets stuck on the way down for 1.5 seconds (fence, branch), or after 2 minutes, it lets go where it is.
  • Release & wait: the drone lands on the waypoint, stops the motors, sets the box down after 2 seconds and waits on the ground. Clip on another box if you like, then press Pause (or RESUME, or E) to take off and continue. It lands even without a box. Home stays where the route took off.
  • Drop payload: drops the box from the waypoint's altitude.
• Drops hurt. A box that falls takes impact damage, and so does everything in it. Up to about 6 m/s (a 2 m fall) there's no damage. It scales up to everything ruined at about 30 m/s (a 46 m fall). Items inside a Protector Case are spared. A frag or flash grenade left Damaged or worse by the landing goes off. Smoke grenades only smoke. The pilot is told how fast the box hit.
• Compared to the drone, the cargo drone is slower, has 25% less flight time and is louder: audible to about 500 m against about 250 m. It has no bottom light and no grenade mount.

Bottom light

The regular drone has a downward light. L cycles it:

• Auto (default): on at night while the drone is within 10 m of whatever is under it, roofs included. That covers take-off and landing.
• On: on whenever the motors run.
• Off.

A grenade on the payload mount blocks it. The setting lasts until the next server restart. The cargo drone has no light.

Group map marks

On servers that run Demo_Group_Map, left mouse in the feed marks what's under the crosshair on your active group's map:

• A point gets a yellow X labelled Drone mark and the in-game time.
• A player gets a red mark and a vehicle an orange one. They only count if the drone can actually see them, otherwise the point is marked.
• The target must be within about 1.5 km of the drone, and you can mark once every 2 seconds.
• Marks are ordinary group markers: they're saved with the group, count toward its marker limit and are deleted on the map like any other.

Anti-Drone System

• A heavy item (6x6, carried in both hands). Place it, plug it into a power source with its 15 m cord (a Power Generator, for example), then use Turn On Anti-Drone System. A green light shows it's active.
• It draws a lot of power: a full Power Generator runs it for about half an hour.
• Detection, 500 m: any drone with its motors running sets off an alert sound at the jammer, audible about 50 m around it. It sounds for each new drone and again every 60 seconds while drones stay in range. It doesn't show where the drone is.
• Jamming, 350 m: the closer the drone, the stronger the jamming.
  • The drone's signal drops by the jamming strength: at 175 m it's halved.
  • Manual control turns sluggish and the drone drifts. Past 30% strength the nose wanders too.
  • Within 70 m the link is cut. The pilot loses control, the drone drifts, and after 3 seconds it runs the jammed failsafe (Land by default), even on a route.
• The pilot's HUD shows interference effects and Strong Interference.
• It can't be packed up while plugged in. Losing power switches it off. It has 500 health.

Charging batteries

The Battery Charger takes Drone Batteries as well as 9V, car and truck batteries.

Charging wears batteries. Every battery on a running charger loses health the whole time the charger is on, whether it's charging or already full. A Drone Battery takes about 17 minutes to charge from empty and loses about half its health doing it. Left on a running charger, it's ruined in about 40 minutes. Take batteries off once they're full.

Troubleshooting

• Fly Drone doesn't appear: switch off your night vision. Some servers allow it.
• Turn On Anti-Drone System doesn't appear: the jammer has no power. Plug it into a running generator.