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Drone Racing League Wants To Be the Next NASCAR (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Drone Racing League has secured a series of significant investments that it hopes will be enough to turn drone races into a spectator sport. The quadcopter drone racing scene has only exists for a few years, so it's still fairly disjointed. Rules and standards vary between organizers, so it can be hard to have fair races. The DRL aims to fix that. In doing so, it hopes to take lessons from NASCAR and the growing e-sports leagues to find an audience. "Often, pilots wear virtual reality goggles that receive a feed from the camera embedded on the drone and maneuver as if they were in the craft itself. That first-person feed is also recorded and used as raw material for the content produced by the Drone Racing League." The high speeds combined with the ability to make interesting (and photogenic) courses may appeal to people who find car racing too boring.
Yee-haw!
...already exists since the mid-1970s.
Granted, the largest R/C vehicles are about 1/4 scale.
Why is reinventing the wheel so popular these days?
You mean the sport where the technology used in the cars is basically unchanged in the last 50 years (I believe NASCAR is close to the only professional racing league anywhere in the world that still uses carburetors on their cars...)
Better check with Chuck Schumer to make sure its ok
Now that might attract an audience . . . two drones trying to knock each other out of the sky.
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This is spoken like someone who's never been to a race. The cars (while mostly old technology) are being pushed to the edge and the drivers are in the car so if something goes wrong, they could, and have, been killed. The engines are powerful enough that the ground shakes. Look, I'm not a huge fan of NASCAR, but even I can see what the draw is, and I just don't see it with drone racing. I'm not saying drone racing won't have an audience, but looking at NASCAR for inspiration doesn't make much sense.
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You mean the *next* next NASCAR... I have it on good authority from 2005 that the Rocket Racing League is the *next* NASCAR.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/s...
So no, drones aren't going to replace these sports. Even if they made it more like Robot Wars it probably wouldn't replace these sports.
They seem to think everything they think up is new and unique and has never been done in the history of humanity before. Drones are just a special type of R/C helicopter with auto stabilisation, but don't tell them that. They think they're an entirely new type of vehicle. Bless.
I would so much like to get into drone racing, have VR goggles, 3D camera on the drone... I'd have a lot of fun. But, also, I think I would quite enjoy watching VR feeds of others racing around, or even visiting/flying around interesting places. Seems like we are nearing the time when this kind of stuff could become feasible.
The thinking of just plain old racing is limited. As pilot safety isn't an issue, taking out other drones in the course of the race ought to be thing.
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Humans in micro aircraft racing through a course marked by obstacles and inflatable towers.. THAT is exciting(check you tube), drones doing even the same thing, meh...
Both would be more entertaining if they added guns tho.
"The quadcopter drone racing scene has only exists for a few years"
At least the editors are on the same level as the average NASCAR audience...
Because, really, that's at least half the draw of nearly all racing - if you fuck up, you'll be dead or horribly maimed. There must be an element of danger or it just isn't compelling.
Like robot wars, paintball, etc.
People don't watch NASCAR to see cars go round in a circle a few hundred times. They go to see the crashes. It's the adrenaline from the potential of an accident by having so many cars going together so closely at such high speeds that attracts people. And because the drivers are in the car and in danger the attraction is even greater. There's no way racing drones is going to recreate that when it's just a chunk of plastic on the line.
The title of "Next NASCAR" was claimed a while ago by the Rocket Racing League with their manned, rocket powered aircraft.
which doesn't seem to be doing much in the way of racing nowdays.
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Won't be many participants unless this is all done inside. Because if they're flying outdoor courses, the operators have to be actual certified pilots (because this is a commercial activity). If they're doing it for fun, that's different. But the FAA considers the fact that flying the exact same RC aircraft in the exact same way in the exact same place while following the exact same safety procedures to be so much more dangerous if you're paid $5 to do so, that you must stop what you're doing and go learn how to fly a Cessna, first. Then you can go back to flying your 250g plastic quad copter legally, because that general aviation certificate definitely will make that $5 safer to earn (unless you want to fly, say, an ultra-light with an actual human being aboard, then there's no need for certification). But if you don't make any money at it, well, then there's no need to know any of that stuff. Because, FAA.
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So pit stops are now what...battery and rotor changes?
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RC Cars would have been the "Next NASCAR" if it were possible. They've been around for decades, and, at this point, so has the Internet. If it hasn't happened yet for RC cars, it's not gonna happen for drones.
Unless they get missiles. If they have missiles, this will take off, just like Battle Bots did.
And will never be NASCAR.
There are RC Air races already, Drones are less entertaining than a standard RC air race because the drones fucking fly themselves, it requires you point in the right direction, not actually fly. The electronics do the flying.
I've been 'racing' RC cars, boats and aircraft for literally 20 years. Drones aren't magically more entertaining thats going to draw people into it.
No one gets hurt in a drone race (no more than spectators at a NASCAR race, for certain). People expect to see carnage and damage that is painful to someone, even if that pain is purely financial. Completely destroying a racing drone costs less than most NASCAR fans will drink in beer while tailgating (And I know how much they cost, I race them!)
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IMHO, I have the same chances.
I have the fastest racing drone on Earth and I can control it with mad skills BUT, I will not register any drone with the FAA or anybody else, so if you all try and put that condition on me, then I will just continue to be the best in my circle of pilots and we will keep racing on our own tracks.
In order to replicate NASCAR you'd have to replicate the ability to "bump", "rub" and mash into each other without crashing most of the time.
Rotor blade based drones will probably not cut it.
It might be great at first, but eventually it will become dominated by money, just like every racing sport did. People are trying get like made to revitalize grass-roots racing, but tracks keep shutting down. It gets to the point that the guys with a few times the budget of the rest far outclass the others. As soon as it becomes a profitable business to be the provider of the best performing parts and drones, the garage tinkerers will be left in the dust unless they have the dough.
I see no one has mentioned yet that this is not news. http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/08/12/2221259/drone-racing-league-receives-a-1-million-from-miami-dolphins-owner
Coming soon to an Amazon delivery drone near you!
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Then it's like various NES racing games
If drones have Facial recognition software they'll become ultimate killing machines;
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