Hands on Epson and DJI's drone Augmented Reality Flight Simulator

Flying drones is not for wimps.

I’m not talking about the toy drones that float around your house, bouncing harmlessly off walls, people, and furniture, or even then $99 ones you keep losing over the ocean.

I mean the real deal. The DJI’s and Yuneec’s of the world. Flyers that cost anywhere from $800 to thousands of dollars. Companies like DJI have built significant intelligence into their drones and vastly simplified the apps, but flying them is still a skill.

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The first time I flew an expensive drone, I couldn’t get used to the pitch, yaw, forward, reverse, and elevation controls and flew it straight into a tree (okay, I backed up into it).

DJI gets it and, now, with partner Epson, they’re trying to take the confusion and risk out of learning how to fly an expensive drone. You just must be willing to pay $700 to use it.

Credit: lance ulanoff/mashable

The somewhat expensive idea is smart. Epson and DJI found a way to connect their Epson Moverio BT-300FPV Smart Glasses directly to a DJI drone’s remote-control hardware and, using a custom, free app developed by Y Media Labs, built what may be the world’s first Augmented Reality Flight Simulator. The app is available on November 6.

It’s a simple concept: Fly an AR drone around the house or outdoors before attempting it with a real one, but it’s more convincing when you try it out yourself.

Epson’s Eric Mizufuka, Product Manager for Augmented Reality Solutions, dropped by with a DJI Mavic Pro, the drone’s remote control and his company’s Moverio BT-300FPV smart glasses. He explained that the headset is already popular among drone flyers who use it to get their drone’s point of view when it’s in-flight.

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In this case, though, I got to test-fly the Mavic Drone in my office, without flying the real drone.

Credit: LANCE ULANOFF/MASHABLE

Mizufuka handed me the drone’s physical remote control, which was hooked directly to Moverio BT-300FPV headset. The Moverio glasses control module jammed into the Mavic Pro remote looked a bit strange and felt a little awkward to hold, but I got used to it.

I put on the Moverio glassed on top of my own glasses; it was a bit uncomfortable, but not terrible, either. Looking through the Moverio eyewear lenses, I could see, overlaid in front of me a floating cube and below that, some details about the virtual drone’s speed and position.

But I couldn’t see the drone.

Mizufuka told me to turn left. I spun around in my chair and found that the virtual Mavic Pro drone, a semi-translucent, but still very accurate version of the drone hovering behind me.

Credit: LANCE ULANOFF/MASHABLE

When I pressed the left joystick to the right the drone spun on its axis. There was no delay. I pushed left and it turned left. I gently pressed the right joystick up and the drone rise to the ceiling. I pressed some more and it rose further. I flew the AR drone right up to my face and then sent it racing away (even in this virtual flight mode, Epson and DJI set limits so the drone didn’t fly so far away it became a tiny dot that I probably couldn’t track, even in AR). I did have to turn my head to keep track of the drone, just as I would to watch a real one in flight. If I glanced left or right without turning my head, I quickly broke the illusion, because I was looking outside the Moverio BT-300 FPV’s somewhat narrow viewport.

The virtual drone was responding exactly how a real one would, but without concern of slamming into a wall. If I didn’t already know how to fly a drone, this could help train me.

Credit: LANCE ULANOFF/MASHABLE

I noticed, though, that the virtual drone disappeared in bright sunlight. Mizufuka showed me a pair of shades you can snap onto the Moverio BT-300FPV glasses that cuts glare and helps your see the AR drone when you go outside.

Overall, it’s an impressive solution and Mizufuka told me the app and headset will work with any drone compatible the fourth version of DJI’s Go flight app.

It is also, however, expensive. Pros will certainly be interested in it, but consumers who buy these drones, the ones who probably most need some AR-based flight training, are not going to pay $700 for the headset.

It’ll be interesting to see if their idea takes off 😉 when it launches on next month.

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