It'll leave the contents of your stomach where they are
I have a sensitive stomach. There are jokes amongst the TechRadar team that confirm this to be true. Maybe you're concerned a first-person view of the world will be too intense and maybe, just maybe, you're right.
This thought isn't new to the team at Parrot. The Bebop's product manager went through great lengths explaining how the fish-eye lens and 3-axis stabilization system work together to limit the nausea-inducing part of the ride.
This seemingly will work well in first-person, as well as aid in the video capture process. Less shake in the air will produce better pictures and video when you're back on the ground.
The 8GB of on-board memory is a step up from the model we saw a few years back, and the camera now captures in full 1080 x 1920p HD. It even has a built-in dual-core processor to process all the awesome shots.
AA battery-powered remotes are the new dinosaurs, extinct
It's called Freeflight 3.0 and it works on Android 4.2 and iOS devices, tablets and phones. It has all the functionality you'd expect – i.e. control sticks – and some you would not, like the ability to customize flight plans and cloud-based storage options.
Add in the separately sold Skycontroller peripheral and now you're really ready for flight school. It hooks into most tablets available on the market and swaps traditional joysticks for the tactile-less touch controls.
Without it that 2km range isn't achievable and, perhaps more importantly, the Skycontroller provides an HDMI port for your Oculus to plug into.
For an enthusiast product it all seems so well put together…
Trouble in Quadridise
There are some things that don't add up to the yet-undisclosed-but-guaranteed-to-be-expensive price tag.
For example, it has a 12-minute battery. I'm no expert in the field, but this can't be far from the norm. That said, is 12 minutes enough time to even travel the aforementioned range of 2km? Henri Seydoux, founder and CEO, says yes, it is. "It flies fast," he said at a press event held last week at the Mint in San Francisco.
That wouldn't be so bad if it charged in the same time, unfortunately that isn't so. While no number is final a representative at Parrot told me it wouldn't be out of the question for the Bebop to take two to three hours to reach full charge.
Still, it's better than buying a 64 pack of AAs.
Adding it all up
Consumer drone technology, especially the kind as powerful as the Bebop is, is still fairly new. We don't know its implications and is something we'll continue to discuss as it becomes a reality.
Regardless of the potentially dangerous implications, the Bebop is a cool piece of tech made even cooler by adding in Oculus support. The pairing makes sense here, and for a certain niche audience this will be the must-own gift when it hits shelves around the holidays.
The Bebop by Parrot and optional Skycontroller peripheral will be available Q4 2014 and as of May 9 there hasn't been a price-point announced.
