Yes this reminds me of RollerCoaster Tycoon. Yes, this is awesome. No, this. is. not. CGI. This is a drone following a real live roller coaster in Sweden. It’s incredible, and honestly makes me excited for the things that drone pilots will do in the future. Following a speeding roller coaster is really way more awesome than watching Drone Racing. I mean yea, Drone Racing is pretty ace, but it’s kind of boring if you’re not flying them yourself. This though, this is pretty ace.
{reddit}
Drones are cool, and so is sand art. Personally, I’m more of a fan of sand castles, but the above art is equally as neat. The video comes via Instagram user @jbenart, and if you check out his page on Instagram, or his website, you can see some equally as impressive masterpieces.
He’s from France, and has some serious skills. I’m equally as impressed with his sand art skills as with his ability to make the artwork before the tide comes in and washes it all away.
I know this video is almost 3 years old, but sometimes it’s nice to revisit some old things, and show how times have changed, and technology improved. In this case, the video quality is still amazing, as is the production quality. You know what has changed, the ability to do something like this and not get arrested.
Victor Chu flew his drone around the 5 boroughs of New York City taking the above footage. He’s pretty good with the drone, and the rest of his channel is now fleshed out with plenty of cool stuff for you to watch and enjoy.
I will say, seeing anything from above is unique, but seeing Manhattan, someplace I go to often, or at least pass by and through from above is unique. There’s so much that you don’t notice or see in the world from the ground.
{NY Post}
More like a practice run if you ask me. I’ve flown drones like this before, they are not easy to control, I know I would crash it trying to make those sharp turns. One thing I think should be kept out of these drone videos though is the audio. I don’t want, or need to hear the high pitched whine of the 4 small motors spinning the blades. It’s distracting.
I think attaching a 360 camera, and flying the drones though a forest would be way cooler though. Watching the bare concrete parking lot is pretty boring. Maybe if there were a few other drones flying at the same time, but I guess not.
{reddit}
Ok, not glow in the dark in the traditional sense, Greed LED strips attached to the skis and poles of a professional skier. Some drone footage of him carving up the mountain side make for a pretty cool video. Being the actual skier though, that looks super dangerous, even with the guiding lights along some of the paths. Skiing through trees in the dark, no thank you.
Gone are the days when these things could be explained away as swamp gas reflecting off the planet Venus. No, with the advent of cheap, highly maneuverable “drones” people can do all sorts of things. At night, with a 1,000 watt LED bar attached to the bottom of it, and individually controlled and colored LEDs on each arm, you can create some pretty ace videos. To a bystander however, they look eerily similar to the traditional UFOs.
I gotta say though, the resulting video is pretty ace. (That’s twice I’ve used ace in this blog post). I really like the video of the bridge. It looks like a render doesn’t it?!
Drone Racing is a thing. I’ve posted about it before, I can’t remember though if I posted about the Drone Racing League (DRL), I think I did. It’s a cool thing to watch the highlights and edited videos of. I’m not sure if I would watch a live race. ESPN however is hoping differently. On Sunday October 23, 2016 they will air the first of 10 episodes for the 2016 DRL season. Honestly, I don’t see it succeeding, at least not at any level approaching those traditional sports reach. I’m not talking Monday Night Football numbers, or even Saturday afternoon hockey. I think it will be a stretch to get in the millions of viewers to this. But we’ll see.
{Engadget}
I’ve posted some First Person Drone video before, but did you know there’s an entire Aerial Sports League? There is. It looks pretty tame in this video, a basic race. But this is America, if I know anything, there’s gotta be an EXTREME version of it somewhere, if not, it’s only a matter of time.
Now, back to the video, it’s pretty cool, but it doesn’t look nearly as fast as you would think it could be. Maybe it’s the 60fps slowing it down? Maybe it’s been stabilized. Either way, that was very watchable from a first person view. I’ve seen some that were headache inducing, but also seemed much, much faster paced.
Anyway, watch this video below from Quartz to get an overview of the new sport:
{MAKE}
We’re coming up on the greatest Holiday in America, the 4th of July. What better way to celebrate than to attach Chinese made fireworks to the back of a drone and fly and shoot them at each other while drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. America. Fuck Yea.
I post this now so that you can prepare yourself for this coming holiday weekend get your own drones, with some fireworks. Be merry.
{reddit}
Filmmakers Guillaume Juin and Joris Favraud, over at their company BigFly, did something most people wouldn’t dare, they flew a drone inside a Byzantine Church in northwest France, the Saint Louis Church in Paimboeuf. Guillaume is the pilot of the drone, while Joris controls the camera direction, pan, and other video things. Together they spent time focusing to get the beautiful shots you see above, as well as make sure that the drone doesn’t hit something, or crash, or fall. Doing that would not only cause the damage to multi thousand dollar drone and camera, but also the multi hundred year old church. I wouldn’t have tried it. But then again, I’m more of an outside landscape photographer anyway.