Tag: Fpv

A group of French aerial drone enthusiasts called AIRgonay recently started a racing competition where participants controlled quadcopters or tricopters in first-person view. YouTuber Herve Pellarin says they were inspired by the pod racing scenes in Star Wars Episode I, but as many others have pointed out, their race is actually more reminiscent of the speeder bike chase scenes in Return of the Jedi.

Last year we saw a drone camera system that streamed live 3D video that can be viewed through the Oculus Rift headset. Diego Araos wrote a program that not only lets you use the Rift to view the feed from a Parrot AR.Drone 2’s camera, it also uses control the drone through the headset.

I’ve had the opportunity to try out a number of head-mounted displays over the years, and most of them have been pretty underwhelming, either from a display quality or comfort perspective. And while many users are waiting to see what the consumer version of the Oculus Rift has to offer, there is already a very capable head-mounted display – with a head-tracking option – on the market today.

The Oculus Rift will most likely lead to a new genre of first-person games, but it could also make drones a lot more fun to use. For his master’s thesis, Jonathan of Intuitive Aerial is working on Oculus FPV, a drone camera system that streams 3D video that can be viewed with the Rift.

There was some uproar about the possibility of using unarmed drones over US soil to locate that cop turned killer fugitive, but maybe that’s because drones have a bad rap because of all of the bombs they’ve been known to drop.

I’m a sucker for remote-controlled toys, especially flying toys. Sadly I’m not qualified to fly any of the airplanes or helicopters I’ve ever tried. Generally I get to fly once and then crash during landing, destroying any chance at a second flight.

I bet a lot of you are like me and get a kick out of seeing the mashups geeks can whip up with a couple gadgets and some spare time. Thomas Sohmers has what might be one of the coolest combos I’ve seen in a long time.

If you’ve ever dreamed of capturing high-altitude flight videos, you probably thought that would be something you could only do with an expensive UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) like the $30,000+ Draganflyer X8. Well, thanks to the guys at Team BlackSheep, you could be flying high for as little as $2000 bucks.