I want to use my DJI Air 3 to film myself mountain biking without a second person operating the drone. ActiveTrack is supposed to do this automatically. How does it work, how do I set it up, and how reliable is it in practice? Will it lose me behind trees or around corners and what happens if it does?
Setup: in DJI Fly, tap on the subject in the live feed and draw a selection box around them. The drone locks on using visual tracking algorithms and begins following while keeping the camera centered. You can still fly the drone manually — ActiveTrack manages position relative to the subject but does not override your inputs.
Tracking modes: Trace (follows directly behind the subject at set distance), Spotlight (camera locks on subject while drone hovers or moves independently — you fly the drone, camera direction is automatic), and Parallel (drone flies alongside the subject).
ActiveTrack 5.0 (Air 3, Mavic 3): adds obstacle avoidance during tracking (side and rear sensors active), faster re-acquisition after brief occlusion, and tracking of subjects up to ~60 kph.
When it loses the subject: partial occlusion (behind a tree briefly) — usually maintains lock. Full occlusion for 1-2+ seconds — loses subject and drone stops following (does not fly around randomly). Re-tap the subject in the live feed to restart tracking. High-contrast clothing against your background significantly helps the tracker distinguish you from the environment.
Check DJI Air 3 with ActiveTrack 5.0 on Amazon
For mountain biking, ActiveTrack performance depends heavily on the environment. Open trails with clear sight lines: excellent tracking. Dense forest with frequent tree occlusion: challenging, frequent re-acquisition needed. The Air 3's 360-degree obstacle avoidance with ActiveTrack 5.0 makes it more capable in complex terrain — the drone routes around obstacles in its own path while maintaining tracking. However, it still loses the subject if you ride behind dense cover for more than a second or two.
Pre-flight planning: choose open sections of trail for the most reliable tracking shots. Identify sections with consistent sight lines of 20-30 meters between subject and drone, and shoot the complex sections manually with a second operator or from a stationary position.
Spotlight mode is a distinct and underutilized feature within ActiveTrack. In Spotlight, the camera locks on the subject and always points at them, but the drone does not automatically follow — you fly the drone manually while the camera direction is automatic. This enables revealing shots: fly the drone backward, sideways, or upward while the camera stays on the stationary or moving subject. The result looks like a complex two-operator shot (one flying, one directing camera) but requires only one person.
Spotlight is particularly useful for property reveals, product shots, and action sequences where you want the camera to track the subject while you control the drone's physical path independently.
I use Spotlight mode regularly for real estate walk-toward shots: I position the drone at 5-10m altitude and 15m in front of a property entrance, activate Spotlight on myself, then walk toward the house naturally while the drone's camera tracks my movement. The resulting footage shows me approaching the property from a stable elevated perspective without needing a second operator. I essentially function as both camera model and implicit camera director simultaneously.
The Air 3's side sensors mean if I walk at an angle, the drone's camera stays locked even as it adjusts position slightly — the combination of Spotlight tracking with APAS obstacle avoidance produces smooth, professional-looking results that would require a two-person crew otherwise.
ActiveTrack on the DJI Mini 4 Pro works but without lateral and rear obstacle avoidance during tracking — the drone may fly into side obstacles while focused on the subject ahead. The Air 3 and Mavic 3's omnidirectional sensors provide a meaningful safety upgrade for action sports self-filming because the drone avoids obstacles in all directions while still tracking. If you primarily plan to use tracking for active self-filming outdoors, the Air 3 is noticeably safer for this use case than the Mini 4 Pro.
Clothing contrast matters: a bright orange or red jacket against a green forest background is much easier for the visual tracker to maintain lock on than a similarly-colored outfit blending into the background.
ActiveTrack and Follow Me are related but use different underlying technologies. ActiveTrack uses computer vision to track a specific visual subject independent of GPS. Follow Me (phone-GPS based) tracks the controller's GPS location rather than a visual subject — it follows wherever the controller goes regardless of visual occlusion. GPS Follow Me works in GPS-good conditions even when the subject is visually obscured; vision-based ActiveTrack works in any lighting but fails when the subject disappears from camera view.
For a detailed comparison of GPS-based Follow Me versus ActiveTrack visual tracking — including when each approach is more reliable and how to combine them — see our guide to how drone Follow Me works.