Rviz camera in ThirdPersonFollower view doesn't align correctly

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Hi @ignite

1. It will always depends on the values you assigned to the Fixed Frame field in the Global options and the Target Frame field on the view options. Looking at the pictures you are visualizing in two different frames: camera_init and aft_mapped.
2. Dealing with TFs extracted from a rosbag is always a bit of a mess. I would recommend you to ensure you have a proper TF tree and then to record your rosbag with /tf /tf_static and /clock topics to see if it a problem of the TF or the time at witch they are recorded.

@Weasfas Thanks for your detailed comment. Please correct me if I am wrong. Regarding point #1, my understanding is that Fixed Frame is a frame that all objects in rviz is plotted "with respect to". So doesn't the camera type (and its settings) only depend on the Target Frame? Because according to this, it is said that the ThirdPersonFollower will maintain a constant viewing angle towards theTarget Frame.

As far as I know, the fixed frame tells rviz the relative coordinates of all plotted frames with respect to the Fixed Frame in the global setting. The thing is, the Target Frame in the view panel is more important because it is changing your local coordinates of the camera (E.g.: applying the coordinate offset). If you have a Fixed Frame as frame1 you can place the Target Frame with <Fixed Frame> but if you change it to another, the offset will be applied and you will be not aligned with the frame you want.

I performed some testing with a robot model in the ThirdPersonFollower view and as long as I use the proper coordinate frames the axis of the frame always plotted aligned. I am using your same set up: Ubuntu Xenial + Kinetic

@Weasfas Thanks! I think I misunderstood the ThirdPersonFollower view typeThe document says that n ThirdPersonFollower, the camera will turn if the Target Frame yaws.

@Weasfas I think I have found the solution from this post. I need to set both Fixed Frame and Target Frame to the same frame.

@ignite

Well, Glad you found a solution =)!

P.D. If you do not mind I will add here your comment as the answer.