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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.
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.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Because it is about flying, not about radio control. Think Star Wars pod race/death star trench/etc kind of flying, rather than boring 'safe circle' racing. Remote control is just a side requirement, because you cannot make these kind of race safe enough to put people inside helicopters racing through narrow canyons, but you can accept 70% 'fatality' rate on drones.
As for existing R/C vehicles, let me guess, they were trying to recreate real race conditions as much as possible, just in smaller scale, rather then trying to innovate? Because they were more 'I'm too afraid to drive real car race, so let's pretend' camp rather than 'real car races are way too boring and safe, let's use robots so we don't have to worry about accidental deaths'? If anything, I would rather compare it to all the robot-fights leagues which are out there - just taking it into air and focusing more on racing than fighting (we will see how much more).
Pro Stock dragsters use them. As do most street leagues. And hydroplanes (AKA "powerboats"). And Kart. And Rallycross. Moto. TT. Bracket. Indy.
NASCAR went from carb to DFI in 2012. Citation
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I hope they make it even more exciting than NASCAR, maybe by offering up the challenge of turning both left and right.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
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.
"Because it is about flying, not about radio control."
You ever tried flying a proper R/C helicopter or plane? Its a damn site harder than a computer stabilised drone my friend.
They're not trying to reinvent the wheel, nor have they made any claim about inventing R/C racing. They're trying to create a business modeled after NASCAR so that they race drones as a career rather than just as a hobby.
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.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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.