Navigating a drone through the wide open air to capture some breathtaking footage can be challenging enough for most pilots.
But guiding a drone through neon-glowing loops as part of a psychedelic obstacle course — equipped with shooting flames — is an entirely different beast.
That's exactly what pilots were faced with last week, as part of the XDC 2 Xtreme Drone Circuit Races in Las Vegas, following the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2016.
Taking a look at this first-person footage of drones trying to fly through this lit-up course is like watching a disco ball light up the dance floor.
According to Gizmodo, pilots attempting to navigate their drones through the course's neon loops and rings of fire had to wear virtual reality headsets that live-streamed feeds from their quadcopter's embedded front-forward-facing cameras. As if the neon colors and shooting flames of the course wasn't enough to get pilots fully immersed, right?
Less than a minute into the footage above, a quadcopter bites the dust with his pilot unable to meet the demands of the challenging course.
Adding to the difficulty of this XDC 2 Xtreme Drone Circuit Races course — if the neon lights didn't blind pilots or the fire didn't scorch their quadcopters, that is — was its tight square, circle, and diamond-shaped obstacles that the drones had to manuever through to successfully stay in flight through the jaunt.
Seeing is believing. This is pretty cool footage.
