Are you a drone flyer?

Jamie Condliffe writes at MIT Technology review,

Forget the football. The latest pastime to become a full-fledged sports phenomenon is drone racing.

Breakneck speeds, daring maneuvers, lucrative TV contracts, and large cash prizes—it’s way more exciting than golf.

Competing for supremacy in the air at small scale isn’t a new phenomenon: people have been going head to head with remote-controlled aircraft in fields for a long old time. But in the last few years, technology has provided competitions with a huge shot of adrenaline, in the form of the first-person view.

Nowadays, the small, nimble drones that zip through the air at speeds over 100 miles per hour are equipped with light, high-definition cameras, which wirelessly beam footage back to a pilot. A head-mounted display makes it feel as if that person controlling the drone is right on board.

...For some of the best drone flyers, though, straight-down-the-line racing is already starting to lose its appeal. In a recent Wired feature, the widely revered pilot Carlos Puertolas explained that as head-to-head races becomes the mainstream, there’s more excitement to be found in flying freestyle—as he demonstrates in this dizzying video. As in snowboarding or skateboarding, this is drone racing’s alternative scene, where tricks and stunts, rather than outright speed, are what demonstrates talent.

Drone racing, then, has all the attributes of a modern sport: big money, TV coverage, speed, fierce competition … and a breakaway tribe that prefers to shun the commercialized side of things. Sounds like it’s time to tune in.

Read more here.