Edgybees Drone Prix
Augmented reality entered a brave new frontier with Pokémon Go last year earning the technology worldwide notoriety. Edgybees, founded in 2016 has developed the world’s first dedicated Augmented reality obstacle course for drone pilots. The recently launched app will work with Epson Moverio BT-300 drone edition smart glasses. You can also use it without the glasses using only your drone controller and smartphone.
Edgybees have been working closely with DJI to develop their app as a unique AR game experience. The concept is similar to every AR game out currently – overlaying certain digital artefacts on digital screen. The direction Edgybees have taken with this is to create elaborate race courses for drones. You can compete with friends or other drone flyers on these courses. DJI are strongly supporting Edgybees new app as acts as a sort of symbiotic partnership with the Hong Kong-based company. The app itself was developed using DJI’s software development kit. The idea behind Edgybees is to hone your skills and master drone flying in a fun safe environment (running into a digital circle won’t break your drone like a tree can).
The Game itself
The Drone Prix app features many different modes. Different modes focus on social play and interaction - other modes focus on flight mastery and education. The App is obviously geared towards DJI drones in particular like the Mavic and probably the Spark (To see which one would perform better check out our review here).The main features we’ve seen are:
Flight Assistant – Track guiding will assist pilots in the 3D space while they navigate around obstacles to collect coins and prizes
Multiple courses – over 30 unique courses to choose from with varying levels of difficulty suitable for novices to experts
Social engagement – pilots can link their user ID to their Facebook account to share the achievements with top performing pilots appearing on leaderboards
Solo and competition modes – race against the clock to beat your previous score or compete with other users around the world
Global Leaderboard – track your performance against other pilots from around the world
Other applications
Clearly, this seems like a huge benefit to just drone pilots but Edgybees is obviously considering a long-term return. At 0:45 seconds into the video you can clearly see the inbuilt potential for an ad-platform.
Personally, I can also see this as a new skin for Mario Kart to play with friends. It’s only a matter of time before they add different drone avatars and items into the experience.
