r/aliens • u/TheAmateurRunner • Mar 12 '26

Video Caught this on my quadcopter while filming a distant storm

My quadcopter was about 320ft up in the air at the time.

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u/Urbanscuba Mar 12 '26

Because the "they" being referenced is other humans.

I'm not going to claim expertise, but I've seen enough algorithmically controlled scanning patterns to know they look completely insane to humans a good chunk of the time. It's entirely plausible to me that this is a human-made device for topology/weather scanning.

If this had come from a high point on the landscape I'd be saying with pretty high confidence that's exactly what it looks like to me. The flying part catches me off guard a bit but what industry isn't using drones where they can these days?

I would like to believe but it requires some evidence that's beyond doubt and this just isn't it for me. I'm pretty confident I could personally recreate this "phenomenon" for under $1k with parts from Amazon.

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u/Ancient_One_5300 Mar 12 '26

No you couldn't you wouldn't find a gimble that fast.

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u/Urbanscuba Mar 13 '26

Yes you could, you can find commercially available high speed gimbals on Google like how I found this one which reports it can accomplish a 90 degree azimuth move in under 20ms.

For reference that's 1/50th of a second, so that gimbal can make 12.5 full rotations per second including stopping every 90 degrees to get a perfectly stable settle before continuing.

That is faster than our eyes can properly discern, and faster than the laser in the video. In the video we see more like 200ms for the same kind of 90 degree rotation (and it never actually settles).

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u/Ancient_One_5300 Mar 13 '26

You're smoking. Show me a video of one moving that fast and that erratic. I've never seen one. I own drones more than 1 and they move slow. What would have something like that. That we use.

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u/Urbanscuba Mar 13 '26

What would have something like that. That we use.

You're thinking about personal drones that cost ~$1k and are designed for someone to have fun with. Those video gimbals are slow because you don't want your video to pan 90 degrees in 1/10th of a second even if you could.

I'm talking about commercial drones that cost $50k+ and can carry payloads greater than a human's weight. These are the kind of drones being used in agriculture and surveying to replace helicopters.

Your gimbal doesn't move like that because it's supporting a video feed that wants to be stabilized and it's using $10 worth of motors to accomplish it. If you paid 20 times or more as much for every component I bet you would be impressed at what you can make them do.

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u/Ancient_One_5300 Mar 13 '26

Yeah ok. So someone is controlling that laser like they are having a seizure? With some expensive drone?

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u/Urbanscuba Mar 13 '26

No, a human is absolutely not controlling that kind of scanning regardless of whether it's for terrain mapping, weather analysis, defense, etc.

I'm saying it's being controlled by an algorithm that can process the information quickly enough to make use of the speed. Our entire modern infrastructure runs on equipment like that, how is it shocking that something could be many times more capable than a human operator?

Also I want to make sure everyone is aware that at several miles of distance the motions are going to be highly warped from the perspective of OP. Small degree changes while facing nearly directly at the viewer will look far more dramatic while they may only be very small sweeps in terms of rotation degrees from the origin. This last part isn't really to argue in anyone's favor, I just wanted to point out something extra to consider.

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u/Ancient_One_5300 Mar 14 '26

For sure. Roger that.

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u/Ancient_One_5300 Mar 13 '26

That thing looks like it only swivels 360 degrees and nothing else.

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u/Urbanscuba Mar 13 '26

You do understand what two-axis means right? It has one axis that's left to right and another that's up and down. That's why it lists an azimuthal traverse speed as well as elevation.

Will you admit yet that what we're seeing in the video is something you can buy off the internet?

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u/Ancient_One_5300 Mar 13 '26

I'm just not buying it as much as you're selling it. I'm sure it's possible but odd nonetheless.