Before you take your new drone out for its maiden flight, it’s a good idea to use a simulator to get a feel for its handling to avoid embarrassing and potentially expensive crashes. You could pay hundreds of pounds for a realistic drone sim, but the strong community spirit of drone pilots means there’s also a growing collection of superb free simulators to help you master your props. There are two main types of drone simulator: those designed to help you practise first-person view (FPV) racing, and those for refining handling of camera drones to help you achieve better video and photos. The best sims offer a variety of courses, variable weather conditions, and realistic physics so you’re fully prepared and know how your drone will respond in different situations. Real licensed drone models are also a boon, as is scope for future development. All of the free drone simulators here let you use your own RC transmitter, which you’ll need to connect using a device like the (a quick Google search should reveal whether there are any alternative ways to link your specific controller to your PC). Most simulators support game controllers as well, and some even let you fly with a keyboard and mouse, though you’d need three hands to control a quadcopter with any success.
![]() There’s a menu option for keyboard controls, but in our tests the sim failed to detect any hardware; something of a moot point, because the fine-control necessary for navigating the complex courses at high speed would be almost impossible with key-hammering. Download here: 2. A stylish sim for amateur drone racers who want full control over handling is also in active beta, available to download and enjoy with no restrictions. Like DRL Drone Racing Simulator, the goal of this great-looking sim is to reproduce the experience of FPV drone-racing as accurately as possible, with advanced physics courtesy of the Unity game engine. Hotprops offers fully adjustable parameters to replicate the behavior of your own drone as closely as possible. The settings offer a very impressive degree of granularity, and the impact of each slider and radio button is clearly explained. Hotprops’ developers are constantly adding, removing and adjusting features in response to testing and user feedback. Best free picture editing apps for macbook. • Along with flexible batch processing, you can also organize and keep panorama and HDR images. Moreover, you can add watermarks to your photos. • It lets you set color preferences and upload your photos to Adobe Stock. What’s the best software for editing drone videos? Please can you suggest which software is the easiest to use and most intuitive to create professional videos on both Windows and Mac? We produce drone shoots of luxury properties, and I would like to edit the raw footage and add graphics in-house. Please can you suggest which software is the easiest to use and most intuitive to. As a result, there can be considerable wait-times while the sim is updated automatically at launch – sometimes up to half an hour. There’s more loading mid-sim too; even if you don’t intend to pit your skills against friends or strangers in the game’s multiplayer mode, you’ll need an internet connection to download courses before you can fly them. The simulation itself is superb, with realistic flight physics and smooth, good-looking graphics. There’s a great choice of maps to test your skills, and they’re fun and varied enough to enjoy as a racing game in their own right (albeit one that requires an RC controller). We don’t yet know whether the Hotprops release candidate will be free-to-play or carry a subscription fee, but the active beta is very promising. One to keep an eye on. Download here: 3. Real licensed drones and real fun, with lots of extra features still to come is in pre-alpha (an early testable release), so it’s still a little rough around the edges and doesn’t yet have a full complement of courses and features. It’s very promising though, and the developers are planning to keep it free to play, with optional donations to support the project. Real Drone Simulator offers two types of environment to practise your skills: ‘virtual reality’ (realistic but computer-generated) and real-world (based on Google Earth). Each level has a difficulty profile, area size and wind strength, so you know what to expect before starting your props. The physics and handling are realistic, and adjust to the weather conditions, but Real Drone Simulator is designed for fun, first and foremost. The final release will gamify the experience with a career mode that lets you earn virtual currency to upgrade your drone, and race it against other pilots locally or online.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |