35 minutes ago, Kristofski said:

Cool as that video is, that drone is 2400$ USD plus headset, that's a pretty steep barrier to entry. I wonder how durable those things are when they crash. Also range would be a thing I imagine; once you're bored of your backyard and the surrounding area, in creeps the extra cost of travelling to cool places to fly over. Considering you still need the controller to fly its not quite the same as a sim setup - I did see the other video with the Helicopter FPV from a chair that had a flight stick and collective, that looked pretty cool.

It's still apples and oranges between the two hobbies imo, and the XWing FPV package comes with FPV headset and controller included for $2400. That's the whole push campaign for this product, its a full easy package that will have you in the air within an hour.

I own the the first production batch XWing, luckily I opted into early pledge and paid $1800 before prices started climbing. You're not gonna find a full (swivel fpv cockpit cam+headset+controller included) fixed wing FPV package for anything near $2400 elsewhere. Anyone who's been in the aerial RC hobby can attest, the entry price is actually on the lower side and is a bargain compared to the amount of resourcing, time and money it costs for DIY built fixed wing FPV RC. Especially now with today's parts import/export inflation.

As far as my VR flight sim setup, Im on about $2500 worth of PC (tower alone) with a $700 1440P monitor. My Quest 3 was $400, my Pimax Dream Air was $2200 shipped, my 8 year old flight sim control hardware about $600 and about another $600 in MSFS addons since 2020.

GPU/CPU prices to run the latest and greatest Flight Simulator XYZ in VR with all bells n whistles isn't going to decline anytime soon, nor will memory, storage or flight sim peripheral hardware. Meanwhile all these awesome $50+ aircraft addons keep popping up that I want and I eventually want to upgrade my 8 year old flight sim control hardware that will easily climb into the $1k+ range. So maybe it's really time to reconsider what "pretty steep barrier to entry" means in 2026?😅

Edited August 4Aug 4 by blueshark747

24 minutes ago, blueshark747 said:

As far as my VR flight sim setup, Im on about $2500 worth of PC (tower alone) with a $700 1440P monitor. My Quest 3 was $400, my Pimax Dream Air was $2200 shipped, my 8 year old flight sim control hardware about $600 and about another $600 in MSFS addons since 2020.

I'm not knocking on the FPV hobby by any means, to each their own - but it is disingenuous to compare the two costs without admitting the PC can do a whole lot more than just flight sim. The drone will only ever do that one thing, whereas the cost of a PC or PS5 for use with MSFS is also going to allow you to do other things with that hardware. I am not familiar enough with the hobby to know why your Pimax couldn't be used with the FPV drone - you said they headset comes included for the price, so maybe there was no option to use the headset you already had? As someone who had his PC before getting into flight sim earlier this year, there's no way I'd consider including in the price of the hobby for me, since I regularly use it for other games and activities.

I know there's guys on here doing flight sim with less than 200$ worth of hardware. How much you're comfortable spending is really a personal choice based on access to disposable income. Personally, I'm up to about 600$ CAD worth of new hardware for use with flight sim, of that, the collective and yoke were the most flight-sim-only purchases. But I get it, if you're an airliner guy and you want the full WINCTRL deck that's gonna cost you.

15 minutes ago, Kristofski said:

I am not familiar enough with the hobby to know why your Pimax couldn't be used with the FPV drone - you said they headset comes included for the price, so maybe there was no option to use the headset you already had?

No, that's not how any of this stuff works....
Yea there's alot of stuff you don't understand simply looking in. My initial post was directed more at experienced VR users like @MarcG and others who have a ground zero understanding of the immersion transition and costs of VR/FPV stuff pertaining to this hobby. Not feeling overwhelmed by so many addons we all can't enjoy at once..

Edited August 4Aug 4 by blueshark747

do what now? (not following thread!)

2 minutes ago, MarcG said:

do what now? (not following thread!)

We has all your base!!

I think they're talking about flying drones thru a VR headset.

Well in defence to BlueShark, no one was comparing cost. Unless I missed something.

haha aahh righto, nothing I've ever done personally so wouldn't know where to start.

1 minute ago, Ron Lefebvre said:

Well in defence to BlueShark, no one was comparing cost. Unless I missed something.

Yea before the user replied about general PS5 vs PC vs drone costs and device purpose.
My initial post was simply saying hey I feel the same way about "addon buying vs flying" spark getting dull. This FPV drone stuff helps with the balance, immersion and satisfaction void. Not just being consumed by flight simming and buying endless addons that just sit in the hangar.

Edited August 4Aug 4 by blueshark747

3 hours ago, Mace said:

Let me see if I'm understanding this...so people put on a VR headset, and then fly a drone outside, for real, through the VR headset? They are outside with the drone wearing VR goggles?

it's not a VR headset as such ... it's a set of video goggles which have a video receiver in them that outputs to a screen (or screens) inside them (or indeed a screen on the ground if you prefer to use a groundstation). The video is transmitted live from the aircraft so you can pilot it as though you're sat onboard.

I still have my first pair of goggles (Fatshark Dominators) which only support analogue video but they're super-reliable and the aircraft I fly with them have a range of approx 2km with a simple circular polarised antenna or ~5-6km with a patch or similar direction antenna attached to the goggles and a ~200mw transmitter onboard the aircraft.

I also have some newer digital goggles from DJI which someone has tested out to 10km but I find flying at range or altitude (besides being illegal) really boring - close in, low down flying is way more fun. The quality of the video via the HD link is absolutely beautiful though.

Here's a video I made while testing a plane I built a few years ago, I think I flew it out to just over a kilometer in this one but I was just testing the autopilot system to make sure it would turn home and not nosedive into the ground if I lost signal 😆. You can see me take the goggles off my face at the end after my "landing" 😆

The autopilot/on-screen display my goggles during this flight looks like this in the live feed to the goggles (that above video is a HD recording from a separate camera I stuck onboard):

In the centre you can see a line which is pointing to home so you don't get lost - if you do, just flick a switch and the aircraft will come home as it knows its launch point relative to its current position via GPS.

I also made a headtracker for the goggles linked to a channel on the transmitter so I could physically turn my head / look up and down and have it remotely control a couple of servos on the aircraft to move the camera and look around.

Pretty cool hobby that I used to do before work (you'll note the timestamp on the video says 5:50am)

Apologies if I derailed the thread - the FPV videos are cool as heck and I've definitely got some homework to do. I think my initial reaction to the 2400$ USD price tag was just sticker shock, I wasn't expecting it to cost that much more than some of the RC drones I've seen on Amazon.

Would love to see a new thread about it however! @FPVSteve posted a ton of really cool info above, and I do have more questions lol

16 hours ago, FPVSteve said:

Great video. Is this north east England? I thought I recognised the general landscape (and wind farm) as looking like the area that I fly through when flying IRL up to Eshott airfield from County Durham? Could be way off here!

2 minutes ago, JYW said:

Great video. Is this north east England? I thought I recognised the general landscape (and wind farm) as looking like the area that I fly through when flying IRL up to Eshott airfield from County Durham? Could be way off here!

No this is North Lincolnshire near a place called Eastoft 👍