Now Available: A Study of Panorama Drone Orientation & Panorama Orientation - A Guide for PTGui Users

[Kelly]

A Study Of Panorama Drone Orientation

Published: Apr 10, 2026

This is a limited study of drone panoramas using GimbalYawDegree and FlightYawDegree DJI-XMP data from the Mavic Air 2. The purpose of the study was to evaluate which of those 2 tags comes closest to being oriented to true north. While the FlightYawDegree approach had better overall deltas, the DJI yaw data in general remains questionable for consistently and reliably orienting drone panoramas to true north and suggests the need for additional testing across multiple air frames.

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Panorama Orientation, A Guide For PTGui Users

Published: Apr 17, 2026

PTGui, a multi-platform panoramic stitching software, is uniquely suited for accurately performing panorama orientation. This guide is intended help PTGui users producing all types of 360° x 180° panoramas including interior and exterior panoramas, terrestrial based sans geotagging, and aerial panos photographed using a drone.

[Erik Krause]

Am 17.04.2026 um 14:21 schrieb Kelly:

> Panorama Orientation, A Guide For PTGui Users

> <https://archive.org/details/panorama-orientation-a-guide-for-ptgui-users>

Interesting, However, a normal HTML format would have been easier to
read on a lot of devices.

Regarding north from sun position: I have a batch (and a bash) script,
that reads the exif location and datetime data from an image dropped on
it (with the help of exiftool) and passes those data to wolfram alpha,
which gives the azimuth of the sun immediately:

https://erik-krause.de/ttt/#wolframalphaazimuth

This is much easier and faster than your approach.

--
Erik Krause
http://www.erik-krause.de

[Kelly]

Oops so sorry - not entirely sure what went wrong and you received anything that was abnormal. Here's another try with thumbnails:

https://archive.org/details/a-study-of-panorama-drone-orientation

https://archive.org/details/panorama-orientation-a-guide-for-ptgui-users

I really like your ExifTool-WolframAlpha script that you wrote - thanks again for doing that! - for the purpose of getting the heading of the panorama; e.g., at 360cities. WolframAlpha does return a sun position which includes an azimuth after ExifTool has extracted a time and place; e.g., sun position 12.03.2026+07h:43m:47s at  44.5446 N -68.4171 E, even if the sun was nowhere to be seen! Interesting! and pretty cool: see below; however, the script does not actually help PTGui users to correctly orient the panorama in PTGui to true north. 

Panorama Orientation, A Guide for PTGui Users, actually grew out from my study of the problematic issues caused by DJI yaw data observed from the Mavic Air 2. 

[Erik Krause]

Am 19.04.2026 um 07:54 schrieb Kelly:

> Oops so sorry - not entirely sure what went wrong and you received anything
> that was abnormal.

I didn't receive anything abnormal. The font size in the flip-book is
simply too small to read if the full page is shown and difficult to
navigate if zoomed in.

> I really like your ExifTool-WolframAlpha script that you wrote - *thanks
> again for doing that!* - for the purpose of getting the heading of the

> panorama; e.g., at 360cities. WolframAlpha does return a sun position which

> includes an azimuth after ExifTool has extracted a *time* and *place*;
> e.g., *sun position 12.03.2026+07h:43m:47s at 44.5446 N -68.4171 E*, even

> if the sun was nowhere to be seen! Interesting! and pretty cool: see below;

Yes, the sun has a position even if below the horizon, and Wolfram Alpha
calculates it correctly. At least if it doesn't mix AM and PM (in which
case you have to choose that manually).

> however, the script does not actually help PTGui users to correctly orient
> the panorama in PTGui to true north.

Why not? Move the panorama horizontally such the the sun is on the
center line in Pano Editor (holding down the Shift key while dragging
with the mouse won't alter pitch). Then enter the azimuth found by
Wolfram Alpha as a negative value in Numerical Transform Yaw and press
Apply. The new image center will point to North. Last go to Metadata tab
and uncheck "Use orientation data of source images" and enter 0° for
Compass Angle.