NEW YORK — In an effort to weed through thousands of competitors in a hunt for the best drone pilots, the Drone Racing League released Wednesday a flight simulator program that aspiring pilots and fans can download to compete on a global scale.
DRL CEO and Founder Nicholas Horbaczewski said the simulator — designed and built internally by a team of engineers led by DRL Head of Product Ryan Gury, whom Horbaczewski refers to as the “Leonardo da Vinci of drone racing” — represents the first “truly global” tryout of any sport.
Anyone over the age of 18 with a broadband connection can download the DRL Simulator for $19.99 and work their way through a training program that will take them from a novice to a competitive drone pilot of the DRL Racer3, a fully manual first-person-view drone that can zip through winding obstacle courses at 90 miles per hour. Last year, the tryouts were only open to people over the age of 21 based in the U.S.
The 24 players with the lowest cumulative time from all five levels will then compete at the Swatch DRL Tryouts on Jan. 15, a live eSport tournament where the winner will walk away with a $75,000 professional contract for the 2018 DRL Allianz World Championship Season as the designated Swatch-sponsored pilot.
Horbaczewski said the simulator is as realistic to actual drone racing as possible, blending the virtual and real worlds by creating an experience that can be easily adapted to the physical race.
During in-person races, pilots wear glasses that give them a first-person view from a camera on their drones, enabling them to whiz around objects as though they’re flying themselves. The simulator positions pilots from that same point of view and offers a set of tools to fine tune various mechanics of the digital drone as pilots can in real life. It’s a fully manual experience that Horbaczewski equates to the way F1 drivers may tune their cars ahead of a race.
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The sport has attracted a pool of pilots with experience in both gaming and adrenaline sports. Horbaczewski himself is a skydiver (and former Tough Mudder exec) who regularly trains indoors at the skydiving tunnel, while Gury is a former motorcycle racer. With the FPV of the drones as they zip through courses and whip around turns, Horbaczewski equates the experience to how one’s brain might be tricked during virtual reality. It’s not uncommon to see pilots duck or turn with their drones, an involuntary reaction that gives them an adrenaline rush similar to car racing.
Last year, Jacob “Jawz” Schneider won the tournament after practicing and competing through the simulator and at the eSport tryouts. His skills translated to the physical drone races on DRL’s courses, and he secured seveth at the 2017 DRL World Championship in London. This year, the simulator features real maps of DRL racecourses from the 2017 season.
“This new and unique e-Sport offers a progressive and dynamic environment, blurring the line between the physical and the digital and giving everybody a democratic chance to participate,” Nick Hayek, the CEO of event sponsor Swatch, said in a statement.
The simulator establishes the industry’s first training program and begins to set a standard for drone racing, a still evolving new sport. It enables pilots to takes reps — racing through obstacles courses and fine-tuning their machines to go even faster — without actually needing to buy a drone or having to worry about it breaking if they slam into objects on the course. It’s not unlike how a baseball player may hit the batting cages or a skydiver might train in an indoor wind tunnel, which then translate well to the diamond or sky.
Horbaczewski refers to DRL as a technology company, rather than a traditional sports league. The courses it builds are highly technical, with instantaneous video links that offer zero lag and enable pilots to control their drones with precision even when their machines are physically far from them on the course.
The league, heading into its third full season, is still evolving. Earlier this year, Horbaczewski fielded questions at the South by Southwest Conference in Austin about whether DRL’s drones and courses might one day be weaponized. While that’s not an imminent plan, he said then that it’s among the possibilities that the league is considering.
One could also see how the simulator could contribute exponentially to the skills of pilots, which could one day lead to even more complicated courses and faster drones. DRL recently set a Guinness World Record for the fastest ground speed by a battery-powered remote-controlled quadcopter, topping out at 179.6 miles per hour.