Slashdot Mirror
Drone Races To Be Broadcast To VR Headsets (thenewstack.io)
An anonymous reader writes: You just plug in the HDMI feed, and you're in the cockpit of the drone," the CEO of the new Drone Racing League tells Wired. "Everyone from Oculus on is expecting to have VR headsets in every home for entertainment consumption, and we're a natural use for it." In anticipation of a new mass entertainment, the Drone Racing League released new footage Thursday highlighting one of their complicated competition courses, "a concrete steampunk torture chamber with cast-iron columns and massive hulking turbines from another era" described as The Gates of Hell. "[T]hese young drone pilots are not just enjoying themselves, but also inventing a new sport," reports one technology site, asking whether we'll ultimately see "drone parks" or even drone demolition derbies and flying robot wars. In an article titled "When Video Games Get Real," they quote one pilot who says it feels like skateboarding in the 1990's, "with a small group of people pushing the envelope and inventing every day" — this time wearing virtual reality googles to experience the addictive thrill of flying.
What good is that, absent a 360 degree camera on the drone? I realize that head tracking exists, and that a pilot can use it to be able to look around them (although I have no idea if they're used on racing drones; I would imagine the FPV rig would add too much weight even if there's barely more to it than two micro servos) but you wouldn't ever allow the audience to do it. However, if you could send the 360 degree image data, then there would be a point to using a headset. Otherwise, just get closer to the TV.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
they find a way to prevent viewers from getting motion sickness.
Google Glass was fundamentally flawed in that it did not have a way to block outside light, which means that it basically only worked well in low light conditions.
Ideally, an AR device should be able to filter outside light on a per-pixel basis, so that each drawn pixel on the screen can be mixed with anything from 0% to 100% of the light that comes in from the outside.
Those drones look like batteries with propellers.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Well the Gear VR costs $99 to strap onto a Samsung phone. I was actually pretty impressed until a carrier update bricked it one night.
Sporting events are likely THE killer app for VR headsets.
Would be pretty cool to watch the football game from the point of view of the quarterback or someone else on the field. Similarly, would actually make Nascar racing interesting to be able to watch it from the driver's perspective.
I would certainly go and watch a sporting event with VR headset enhancements.
Come to think about it, the bandwidth for this is probably more than most people can push down from their home ethernet in realtime. This would make it the perfect sort of app for those Off Tack Betting sort of places.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Yea ... thats why it failed ... not because its a worthless device that tries too hard ... that had nothing at all to do with it, right?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Also, what's the point of using a VR headset when you only have one video feed? Look closely at the drone video and you will see a simple fpv board camera mounted on the top, with a center-front mounted gopro (or gopro clone). You're not going to get 3d video with that setup.
And a few other things wrong here: why are competition fpv drones carrying extra weight with a high-def video recorder on board? Stupid. And what's with that "closed like a box" body configuration? Where's the airflow? These folks aren't professionals; they're wannabes. Move on, people.
it just needs double resolution on the display device and then it's ok for movies etc.. and cheaper than a 80 inch tv.
thats when it becomes mainstream.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Can you stop calling 'sport' activities that are anything but. Piloting a drone by moving your thumbs around is not a sport. Mountain climbing is. Chess isn't. It's not because you have smelly armpits at the end of the day that it's a sport, you need real sweat for that. Call it what it is: a game.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Put a bag over your head.
As an added bonus, nobody will know that you're a total dork.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."