They provide the means of entry with the simulator combined with the chance for one very capable pilot to win a $75,000 contract to fly for DRL in the 2018 season. I snagged it right off of their website.Īn interesting thing about the way DRL is approaching this nascent market is the soup-to-nuts methodology. If that sounds like the net result of a two-hour marketing meeting, well, it probably should. Being both a sports and media company, DRL combines world-class pilots, iconic locations, and proprietary technology to create engaging drone racing content with mass appeal. It is stated that the DRL is the premier drone racing league. Not surprisingly, this drone racing simulator is being developed by The Drone Racing League, or DRL. So, after 500 words on the subject of “I don’t know what I’m talking about,” let’s chat a little bit about The Drone Racing League Simulator. I still fly both real and model airplanes-it might be a bad idea to continue doing that with a drone physics mentality. It is proving nigh on impossible to re-train my reactions and responses to support drone flying, and I am not 100 percent sure that I want to. Fixed-wing airplanes in particular, and rotary-wing helicopters to a lesser degree, fly nothing at all like quadcopters.Īt this point in my progression, I am starting to think that someone with literally no flying experience at all would have an advantage over me. ![]() Over the last 40 years, I have flown both R/C and real airplanes quite a lot. The muscle motions and memories ingrained from all of that fixed-wing flying were going to make the transition to a first-person-view (FPV) drone murderously hard. To be fair, I was starting out with a certain disadvantage from my years of past flying experience. Drone racing isn’t a perfect example of that, given that drones are actually relatively affordable, far more so than, say, a Formula 1 car, but even without the Walter Mitty aspect, a good simulator can give you a pretty good idea as to what you would be up against if you decided to try it for real. Sims also provide limited access to experiences you would likely never get to experience at all in real life. I have, through personal experience, found that the best way to learn the fundamentals of any type of flying, from both a cost and safety point of view, is with a simulator. Who would say no to that?Ĭertainly not me. No broken drones (or bones), no hunting for replacement parts, and no crashing of the daggone thing into soft, easily bruised things like, well, me. ultra-cheap?) way of trying my hand at it. ![]() That doesn’t mean I’m not interested, though, which is why I was excited to try out an ultra-safe (well, it’s not like these guys die in crashes, so…. Pair that with the blinkered view they get from the FPV headset and the arrant twitchiness of the awkward-flying drones and you have the exact recipe for ignominious and abject defeat for anyone not possessing very fine-tuned and precise drone flying skills. The astonishingly quick reaction times these folks display was in and of itself an extremely obvious sign that I would not be winning many, if any, races. ![]() I’ve seen drone racing on TV, so it’s not like I was going into this blind: I knew that this was going to be a very tough thing to try. You don’t go to the drone races with the skills you want, you go to the drone races with the dope drone flying skillz you have. From that list, I think I can safely say that the only thing I have in sufficient quantity is time, although the discipline to spend a great deal of it practicing stuff is not on my list of things that I have in any degree of abundance.Īs may be. ![]() Sure, physical strength doesn’t matter nearly as much in that arena (so to speak), but reaction time, visual acuity, excellent muscle memory, and the need for hours and hours of practice are still essential components for being competitive. However, that the advent of esports is no panacea. Take it from me: having a competitive nature in a guy that buys his muscle shirts in the Boys 8 to 10 department is no way to go through life. When I’m behind the wheel of a car, there are only two other things sharing the road with me: opponents and obstacles. No matter what it is, I want to beat you. Sadly, though, this personal trait makes a poor companion to another facet of my personality: I’m competitive. I’ve been intrigued by the emergence of eSports because I have zero, none, nada, nil, zilch, and most especially, nary a smidgen of athletic ability.
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