Augmented reality the new era to Drone racing and mimicking the real FPV drone pilots...

As one might believe... Augmented reality is the next big thing... Or is it? I find that in the past the use of such technology fell flat on its face... Its close brother Virtual reality can have mixed results... But I guess for anything to take off you need constant and ever improving content...

The interface using tracking technology such as the Wii game console for a virtual tennis was a good idea... and for a while I would try such games as it doesn't require much of a story other then hit the ball to the other side of the court... Other games like driving ones and shoot them ups have a cartoon like appearance... But beyond the older wii technology, the VR has progressed slowly, but after a few years on Sony play station has slightly better gaming system...
I played a few one in particular was a game called "Rush of blood", where you are immersed in a carnival ride armed with two guns of varying calibers to fend of zombie clowns and various ghouls design to scare you in a dark twisted Victorian fairground setting...


After that I was very well addicted to the loud scares and reality warping roller-coaster ride, for which I tolerated even though I dont like such things... But even now the variety of VR games are few and far between... Although I think its a steadily building to a possible explosion of VR culture... Since earlier this year we saw the film "Ready player one"... Its feels like the whole industry is now gearing up to VR and the technology for head displays and tracking your movements...


The technology is still expensive as the Occulus rift and gaming PC for VR would be a thousand pounds or more... While the HTC and Play-station systems at slightly at roughly half the price...
But for most folks its still is classed as luxury items for what is still classed a gimmick...
But immersive story based games and social interaction on a platform, its small wonder why the futurists are seeing that our lives can be occupied by such things...

So why mention this on a drone blog?... its literally the opposite to VR as real places are captured and photographed with no need for computer simulations... The fact that drone flying in a open space leads to the imagination of some gamer to come by and utilize this for a possible game...

One of the first popular Augmented reality GPS based game was the game Pokemon... Love it or hate it... It uses your phones advanced computer hardware to generate a virtual map with real locations tagged with wild Pokemon creatures for you to catch with a special ball, in which you throw to collect in your virtual zoo... Along with virtual arenas to fight your pets in with other people its popularity grew for a time... Although I didn't really see the point in this sort of thing... As you always need a internet connection and your phone switched on to walk down to some location to capture a cartoon creature... The positive thing it gets people walking outside for exercise but I personally see this as a fad for the millennial's or someone much younger then my self...

But then came the you-tube video hacks, whereby someone would attach their Pokemon game or rather their phone, to a drone and fly in real time to a real location... The hack is basically make your drone do all the work of traveling while the phone records GPS data in its Pokemon capturing state...
While this alone opens up the potential for a drone game... The whole idea of adding a phone your drone could be a expensive failure... Come to 2 years later and you have a Augmented Reality game that's specifically for the Drone...

Drone Prix is a virtual race track that you can place anywhere you chose to fly... You still need internet connection... presumably to login your locations and your track scores... But you set up your start point and fly around a track with your location as a backdrop in your camera view... I started with the DJI go app to set up my cameras exposure but other then screen capturing a couple of games I played the game with relative ease... I personally had done terrible because the drones flight characteristics was setup for kite surfing and my expos made me over shoot the corners too much but I found the game to be engaging and that the camera view didn't take away anything from the game... In fact the sharp corners of the race track makes me think I could improve my pilot skills if I set my expos properly and retry this game again...

The only bad thing is that you have to have your drone on and flying to make this game to work... This makes it more annoying as you cant practice with controller in hand, with the hard race tracks with a strict time restrictions... Possibly at a later date you could... But for the time being you have to charge your batteries and fly to 30% for the app to register your scores on the leader-board... And since its a global board your initial ranking will be very  very low...
Other then improving your stick work on the controller the Drone Prix game is for me a gimmick which is fun but not for me... I would prefer a shoot them up game...

But I can see this as a possible training thing for pilots who fly First person view... Not in direct comparison of the speeds and thrilling rides as the FPV drone races... But a distant relative... as the track is still on a single racing plane not like the intricate 3D gravity defying tracks of a official drone track... The race is one now for more AR games as so fare this is the first of its kind...
from humble beginnings of Pokemon to sophisticated hardware of drone and mobile phone computering with a cloud based internet server its possible that Drone AR games might grow in a few years time...