These people are gon na, learn something. What are you learning we're gon na learn 10 fpv trends that die die and and two more that need to die. Hey guys welcome to rota right i'm ladrib and i am joshua bardwell and, as far as i know, i'm still a rhoda riot cast member yeah it's getting harder and harder to uh keep episodes with other people in them coming out. Whatever we're getting creative we'll find ways to uh keep the content going so we're talking about things that you guys may or may not even be aware that came and went in the fpv world. Things are always changing in fpv as such, there are certain things that have come in real, hot and and just kind of disappeared. Some of them were just a terrible idea to begin with, but others were the best possible solution and then finally, something that came along well, you'll see you'll, see bart what's. Our first fpv trend that does the first fpv trend that died on this list is soft. Mounted motors – and i think this is the best one we could start with because i'm – not a hundred percent sure that this trend wasn't a troll to begin with okay. So the idea here is that your motors vibrate, your props, vibrate and those vibrations make it to your flight controller and your fpv drone isn't going to be able to fly as smoothly as possible. So there are still ways that we try to reduce those vibrations from making it to their gyro.
Both physical solutions like soft, mounting your flight controller and software solutions like filters built into the flight control software, but along the way, one of the things that people were doing was soft mounting their their motors themselves. So, on january 13th, 2017, none other than johnny fpv posted a video to youtube called the secret to a perfect flying drone soft mounting motors, and you got ta, listen to johnny. If you guys aren't aware who johnny is you're under a rock, because even people outside of the fpv world have heard of johnny you've seen his videos they're, some of the most spectacular amazing visual masterpieces ever that guy is a master of his craft and at one Point he said the secret to being as good as him is just soft soft mounting motions yeah, and he showed how you could take some strips of electrical tape. Put them underneath your motors, and that provides enough soft mounting, and there was a whole lot of debate. People were arguing whether one piece of electrical tape was good enough, whether it was two pieces, whether what kind of electrical tape. I even made a video where i tested a quad with and without soft mounting, and i showed that soft mounting does in fact reduce the amount of noise getting to the gyro, but you're not kidding the amount of effort and time and agonizing that people were putting Into this, like no joke, they were comparing different brands of electrical tape.
Now here's here's, why this trend died. Soft mounting motors adds complexity. If you screw the screws down too tight, then the soft mounting isn't effective. If you screw the screws down too loose, then your motors fall off. So this was a big deal when we saw that happen to people, and the other thing i saw is that flight controllers started coming with gummies, like almost all flight controllers today come with gummies. Yes and they're – basically already soft mounted, i believe, is – is really important. I don't even consider flight controllers that don't have the soft mounting built in to me that's that's, one of the greatest little tweaks that came about that made the the biggest difference that that i could tell so so. Here'S the takeaway with filtering and soft mounting. You want enough, but more than enough is too much you don't need it and these days, especially with modern frames and modern flight control software. If you have gummies on your flight controller, you probably don't need to soft mount. Your motors soft mounting your motors can work, but it also adds a lot of problems and it is a trend that we're glad to see go to this day. I'M, not sure whether johnny just said to willie i'll bet. If i release a video saying this is the secret to a perfect flying drone, the whole world, 126 000 views drew, i still think johnny might have just been trolling us the secret to making the greatest fpv films ever that's.
The thing johnny like. Why does johnny's drone fly so good because he's johnny he's a freaking phenom he's, not he's, not like you know what by crotch flying like crap. Let me put some tape on the motors: oh my god, it's so good. I think he was trolling. Okay, the next one is six bladed props, believe it or not. This was actually a thing for a minute. People had props that had six blades to them. So, for a long while two bladed props were like the only thing and then three bladed props came out and oh my god it's so much better, the cornering the grip, the acceleration. So if three is better than two, then four must be better than three, and some people do prefer four and let's just keep going, and before long we had six bladed props, i mean here's the here's. The premise is that, as you add, more blades, you basically get like better cornering that's kind of what happens all those being equal. A three three blade prop corner: better four blade propel corner even better, but you get a little bit less top end because there's more drag and you also the props, just become super fragile, the more blades you have the easier it is to break a blade and Have the prop be out of balance, so i feel like there just must have been a law of diminishing returns so like it did fly right like did you actually see? I mostly saw pictures of them.
I don't recall seeing videos of people actually flying. I just remember seeing tons of pictures of six. Ladies no, they flew, but but if you think about it, like you got the hub yeah and then all the props are stuck into the hub and the connection points are super thin right and then the minute you crash. The whole thing is just junk and it's. Just like you don't, nobody needs that much grip in the corners it was. It was overkill. The next fpv trend that died is super high rates now i'm, not at i'm, not saying that high rates are dead. There are still a ton of pilots out there that do really impressive tricks, but they could be better if they used lower rates. No, no that's, not what i say, super high rates. Why are why do you hate people who use super high rates? No because, because i'm, not talking about what we're, seeing today, where there's still a good amount of snaps, what i'm talking about is there was a time when i mean people were setting their quads up with just ridiculous rates. It was actually a problem on the forums. Are people asking okay, i'm spinning so fast the gyro can't keep up. What do i have to do, and then do you remember that and then they were actually talking about writing code in the beta flight, where it would detect if you were spinning so fast that it would kind of like shut the gyro off for a second and Like it would go into just like kind of like a manual mode where, like full stick, was just like like full.
I i remember that the the original there was a tie. Oh man, you're, bringing back memories right because that it was like a problem. They were trying to solve when you went to full stick. The flight controller would basically shut down the pid loop and instead of trying to hit a target angular rate, it would just put the left motors to full and the right motors to zero and spin the quad as fast as the flipping could yeah. Now they don't do that anymore. No! Well, because no one's trying to spin that fast anymore – and i mean maybe it's – been that fast yeah, no one needs to spend. It was like 2 000 degrees per second. I mean it was yes, it was insane, and i remember one of the first times i i flew with other people. It was the most terrifying sound. I pulled off my goggles because he just went it was like like it was doing just one of those death scream death howl, and i guess there is almost something like mechanically impressive about it. When you see the quad just go like like, there is something to it, but as far as actual fpv, i mean you're so exceeding what you can visually see, it's like when a guitarist solos as fast as he possibly can, and instead of being something musical it's. Just like a noise of notes battering you in the face yeah when you spin so fast, you can't, you can't, keep up and that's the that's.
Why? I think this trend died because people think faster is more impressive, but eventually you get to a point where your fingers can't keep up and you have no precision on the sticks and i think people are just over trying to impress others by moving the stick. All the way, one way and the quad just going 3000 degrees per second just something: crazy, um and they're, actually doing tricks and flying with more purpose, and not just showing like what the machine is capable of it's more about what. Because just spinning that fast. That shows off what the motors in the flight controller can do, but what you can actually do as a pilot. You know people are bringing it down, but so, like i said, there's still high rate pilots, but i think they're at a more reasonable place of like 1200, maybe 1300 degrees per second that's, still pretty high it's, still pretty high, but it's, not two or three thousand. I fly it i'm at 900, yeah i'm. At 900.. I did 11. I came down to nine. I think. Overall people are lowering their value flies at seven, all right, seven's a little slow. What do you flat well mine are super weird mine's at 8.50. On roll 690 on pitch and like 400 on y'all, i know whoa, yeah, that's super weird and my yaw is linear, it's, a weird one. I want to answer. I want to introduce the next one.
This one is near and dear to my heart, integrating your pdb or your osd or your flight controller into the frame stack kids. These days don't. Remember, do you remember the zmr 250 yeah? It was one of the first cheap five inch frames, yeah and one of the coolest things about it. Yes, was that it made the build so much easier. You could buy a version of it. One of the frame plates itself wasn't carbon fiber. It was a a large pdb, it was a large size circuit board and you could solder your escs and your camera and your video transmitter and all this stuff to the like to the frame itself, because the frame was made out of a circuit. It was super. It seemed like such a good idea and then it broke because you you can't flex, you can't flex circuit boards over and over again and they just break popped off and then you'd have to and then you'd have to take your whole quadcopter apart, because your bottom Plate was your flight controller or your osd though, and you have to just tear the whole thing apart and replace it, and it was super expensive. I think, having surface mount components is where that really breaks down, because one of the most popular frames that had some level of uh you know pdb integration is the alien. The inner plate of the alien is actually a pdb with press nuts integrated impulse kind of kept that alive in a sense for a long time.
The difference was they didn't have any surface mount components. That pdb was purely just a power and ground, so there's, really just two layers of copper and that flexing isn't going to crack any thin traces or you know flex off any surface mounted components. So it worked really well on the alien. But ultimately, you saw that impulse with the reverb and the pdbs they offered for that weren't structural anymore. It was a separate piece that taped onto the frame that's the takeaway electronic components should not be structural. Yes and structural components should not have integrated electronics yeah, not on a quadcopter that's, going to crash the next fev trend that died. This one. We put it on the list almost as an homage to the sort of forefathers of fpv, because this was before all of our time it is making fpv goggles out of ski goggles. Yes long before we had super sleek fat sharks that you know looked like you were, you know, seeing into the future, people were piecing together, fpv goggles, out of you, know what they, what they could and and one of the one of the ways to get good Seal around the face where you wouldn't have light leakage between your eye and the screen was to retrofit uh some some type of screen, whether it was a screen or you know, an existing uh display that's meant to be worn over your eye into ski goggles. So so people were taking ski goggles, cutting the lens blacking it out fitting the the display into the cut sealing it with like silicon and whatnot, and that was at the time at the time.
I think that was one of the coolest options right. The alternative was like having a literal box on your head, but what were they using? I mean the only one i remember were the the cinemizers, the zeiss cinema cinemizers and i don't think everyone was doing that because they were really pricey. I think i remember seeing a picture tim nilsson of get a p. The fpv founder and he's got like speed, goggle cinemizers. Maybe we can find a picture of that picture, but that was like one of that was kind of this weird thing where they were taking. This really expensive consumer product and then hacking them into ski goggles with hot glue and silicon, but that was i mean that was you were the cool kid you were flying fpv, and that makes you super cool and it was a trend because it was way better Than you know, using a monitor on a tripod or using some crazy box goggle, but then finally, we started getting goggles like fat sharks. We finally got purpose made goggles that met our needs. Another trend that died that's, another bit of a history lesson is tricopters long before quadcopters became just the norm. I mean quads are that's what a drone is now people were experimenting with different variations. One of the most popular ones back in the day was a tricopter. What made a tricopter so interesting, there weren't enough motors that you could just control the machine with thrust differentials.
You actually had to put one of the motors on a tilting mechanism to get y'all out of it. Yeah the big. The big advantage of tricopters was that, back before we had modern esc's motor braking was extremely weak, so you could push current through a motor and spin it up pretty quickly. But then, when you wanted it to slow down it, couldn't slow down, it was just basically air drag slowed it down. That meant that the yaw performance of a quadcopter was very, very poor, because the motors could spin up only as fast as the motors spun down or the quad would get destabilized. And if you tried to make abrupt yaw moves, the quad would just kind of completely lose itself, but then tricopters were kind of the ultimate answer that you just tilt the motor and you get yaw and there are still tricopter fans out there who love the kind Of swoosh no they're cool, when i i love the sound of them, i love the look of them. I i think they're awesome. They just fly like garbage compared to modern compared to mine, modern the drones so you're, absolutely right. You know what you're talking through. Is this history, where tricopters actually were supreme for for a brief shining moment? Tricopters did outperform drones in the air because of that superior yaw performance. The disadvantage they always had was that mechanical complexity. In a crash, you had more moving parts that tended to break.
I mean we can't talk about tricopters. Have we even said his name? We even say david, david vindistal. That was like the tricopter king. So all on the way they were gosh that yaw performance was so good, but eventually flight control, software, esc technology caught up and now eses and flight controllers are capable of starting and stopping the motors so quickly that you can get really really good yaw performance out Of a quadcopter and people reach out to me sometimes and say: hey, i want to build a tricopter and i'm. Just like don't, i mean it's, an enthusiast's drone, if you, if you love tricopters, and you want to build them like there's classic car owners. You know like that that want to drive the old carbureted engine and yeah it's a it's, a pain in the butt and, if it's, if it's cold and you can't start and you got ta tune it and all this stuff. But but oh carburetor, man carburetor. If you're an enthusiast about carburetors, maybe a tricopter is for you. If you want a good flying, quad don't build a tractor. The next fpv trend that died is glass, nylon, props, kids, do you like crashing and then taking off again without changing your props. Do you like coming back from a day of flying without having spent 15 20 on new props? Then you don't, you should do not like glass nylon pro. You should be very thankful that glass nylon props have finally been outmatched.
This was the plastic blend of props. That was, it was the thing that the pros used because they did fly so much nicer than every other plo prop available. They had just this certain stiffness and lightness. The disadvantages they were super fragile joshua is not exaggerating. Yet every crash touched a branch they would explode, just even a contact. There was no like power through the scragger, like you know how you can fly on on modern props and maybe you're getting some stragglers and bushes and oh, oh i'm, still flying like zero percent chance, it's, not that that was the only thing available. There always were more durable, prop options and i actually never really got into the glass nylon thing at the time when i was flying where my skill level was at and all that stuff i never really bought into the glass nylon. I was flying the durable props that were available on the rare occasion that i did fly a glass nylon prop. The performance was just in arguably better and it's easy to forget how spoiled we are today, because freestyle pilots today assume that if you crash you're going to be able to turtle mode you're going to be able to limp home racers assume that if you hit a Gate you're probably going to be able to finish your laps. You know maybe you'll get a little jiggle in the camera. None of that was possible, no we're, so lucky that they finally they've figured out some new plastic blends that allow props to be durable and high performance.
So now we're flying props that and they fly amazing they're, smooth, they're, thrusty they're lightweight and they have that durability. Yeah, i remember i used to fly uh. This is back when i flew 3s 6 inch. Oh yeah that's a trend and uh, and i was flying these six inch. King kong props six inch king kong, 60, 40 buy blades and they were okay and i switched to the hq 60 40 and they were oh, my god so much better, going to a proper glass nylon. Just it was. It was incredible: 25, a buck 25. A a prop every time i crashed, i was spending like three dollars: yeah 25 times yeah that really made it. You know every crash. Every time i crashed. 250. 250. I'D come back and i'd be like. Oh, my god. I just spent 25 in props and uh that's a lot of money when you're, not a professional uh, doing this for a living. The next fpv trend that died. I don't think this was even ever a trend, but i think it has to be on the list. Is 3d we're not it's? No three we're, not talking we're, not talking about 3d flying zoey won't. Let that one die. She will not let 3d flying down no we're talking about stereoscopic 3d fpv. I got to tell you drew i'm, not even sure this was a trend, although i like, i like having it in the video because, like there were like two or three, maybe cameras out there that supported 3d and, like almost nobody ever bought them.
A few people have reached out to me over the years and said: hey ever tried, 3d it's kind of cool and i've been like no, not really and then that's just it. I don't think this was ever really a trend. I i feel like it's the exact definition of a trend where it it came. I feel like there was an excitement around it. There was some following and then it just it never really grabbed on so okay. So why so? The idea was, people started thinking that it might be cool to fly with 3d video. It might help their proximity, they could actually see depth. I think the idea is pretty sound, but to accomplish this, what you have to do is you have to provide each eye with a separate video coming from two cameras that are offset that's. What stereoscopic 3d video is it's two cameras and each eye gets one image and then your brain puts together the two offset images and you see 3d it's a trick that works very well it's how 3d movies work. Actually there are a couple problems with this. One of the problems is technical. You either need two cameras and two video transmitters and then you need a set of goggles with two receivers. Yes, yeah. You need each other sky zone, goggles, actually that's how they do 3d sky zone. Does it that way, right, um, fat, shark goggles only have one receiver and the way they'll do it is they'll, do every other scan line or they'll split the screen down the middle vertically? It depends on the transmitter and the problem with that is that you lose half your resolution.
So your already crappy standard definition, low resolution feed is now half resolution. Although some people have argued that, like your brain, puts it back together, but the real problem, i think and i've heard this from people who have actually flown this – is that the separation of the cameras to get close to human vision. You need so many inches of separation and on a mini quad. You tend to get much much less separation than that, and so you don't actually get a very strong stereoscopic effect. Did you ever fly 3d fpv? I did. I did actually because i i did. I was kind of a late adopter to fat sharks. I started fpv on sky zones. You didn't stuck with sky zones for a while and sky zones, as you said, had a 3d function built in because the sky zone goggles had built in diversity. It is it's a cool gimmick. The reality of it is you're, not always that close to things, there's still multiple feet of distance between you and the object, and you really don't see that 3d effect until it's like right there anyway. I still don't know that it would be worth having to buy dedicated goggles for all that all right. The next trend, angled motor mounts, so pilots were angling, their motors forward to get more forward. What were they, why were they doing it? So at the time we didn't have so many dedicated fpv cameras available to to buy pilots were using like board cameras and the way, often times those board cameras were mounted to frames was like vertically on a piece of vertical carbon.
So so you cameras you couldn't. Just tilt your camera up, camera tilt hadn't really come around, yet it wasn't really accepted it. Wasn'T really mainstream. Yet only only a few pilots were figuring out ways to actually tilt the camera. So what they started doing instead was oh let's tilt the motors forward and that's how we'll be able to fly forward. I remember those early frames, they'd have a notch cut in the top plate and you could do your board camera straight up and down right or you could tilt it like 15 degrees, and that was just it. Oh, that was something else. You go five or 15 degrees right, but that that was pretty much yo one. So if you wanted to go faster, you couldn't tilt the camera more. You couldn't pitch forward, because then you couldn't see where you were going. So you were like oh let's tilt. The motors and it did work, but there were some problems. One of the problems is that when you take the motors off the plane of sort of rotation, you get coupling between the axes. Right, um and the flight controller gets a little bit confused. Well what i? What i did see people doing was. They would actually then angle the flight controller too, to compensate so they angled the flight controller, so that the flight controller was on level with the motors. If you didn't, then the coupling you got would upset the flight controller.
I guess another potential advantage of that approach. Is it lets you move faster with less up tilt, so you get less drag less wind resistance, okay, there's? Something to that. I mean that's, that's, legit yeah, but nobody's nobody's doing this anymore. It died so tilting things kind of leads into the next fpv trend, which is the camera couch. The camera couch the faster you're going, the more angle that you have the more that your recording camera ends up looking at the ground, so we started looking for ways. Okay, how do you angle up your hd camera, so one of the first solutions that pilots came up with was a camera couch where they were putting their camera on some sort of wedge, usually like a piece of foam and then strapping it down and that's how They were angling up their camera. You know you say it was usually a piece of foam um but i'd like to show you a picture of my old camera. Couch i'd, like to remind everybody that this was before the days of 3d printing. You just went out to the barn, and you worked with what you had what oh i heard, what you did there. You changed the tone to be less yeah, zip ties and wood, baby wood and look at the wood bumper down on the uh. Oh, my gosh that's uh, that's wood, baby that's, a couch there's, some ingenuity there that camera is a relic too.
I mean there's a trend, the mobius right now, we're, all using you, know, gopros or gopro sessions, so we're, either using cubes or kind of more of the vertical rectangle cameras. But the flat camera was a thing for a minute. I sometimes still think that there's some there's there's something to be said for that, but it just takes up so much space on the top plate, but that was a more con it's. Just it was a more common camera at the time to have this flat camera yep. So you really, i mean yeah, it does well. I mean you couldn't. If you couldn't afford a gopro that's, just what you got was the most room. I honestly, i think the wood there's something to be said for your wood couch there, because i, i feel, like the wood's, going to be a lot less prone to camera, ejections and that's, the biggest disadvantage of the camera. Couch you're sticking your camera on a wedge piece of foam or wood and then just strapping it down one way or another. But then, when you crash you're, just relying on a strap to keep your camera from going flying. So now we have. We have access to a plethora of 3d printed, anything we could want for any camera. We want, and most people have gone through the advent of durable 3d printed parts killed, camera couches, because no one uses camera couches anymore, no there's, still some holdouts there's, still some holdouts van over was using a camera couch because he he had it in his this Guy vanover is one of those guys that he just gets things in his head, that he's, convinced and one day he'll just say: i think something about 3d printed mounts vibrations or something i'm, going back to to go pro session on a piece of foam with a Camera strap and that's the butter and then what did we see that day, we're looking for his camera in tall grass with a freaking metal detector and i don't know that's a big advantage just losing the camera scarred him, but he went back to 3d printed mounts Pretty quickly after that 3d printed bounce screwed to the frame or strapped to the frame that's the way to do it, i i got an extra piece i want to do for this video, which is, i got a couple trends in mind that need to die.
They haven't died yet, but they need to die. Okay and the first one is going to be we've been a lot quieter, analog fpv it needs to go, it needs to go. Can we just get everyone on that digital hype already come on baby? Are you done? Riot.Com dji digital fpv available now so speaking of camera, mounting i've been seeing a ton of quads nowadays coming out with this gopro like just a gopro screw mount, and i i think what did that two things did that number one the hero 8 came out and It has built in little clips for that mount and cinewoops started using it and cinewoops commonly need adjustable up tilt. So you wouldn't, want to put a fixed up tilt 3d printed mount on your cinewood, but cinewoops don't crash as much as freestyle, quads and i've. Seen some people start designing freestyle frames with that screw in gopro mount stop. It do not do that. That is a terrible idea. We have been down that road. We know what's down that road that's a trend that's come back because that that was a thing like, alongside with their camera, couches people were trying to use the stock gopro mount the thing that comes with this little stick on thing: sticking it to the top of The frame literally sticking it on they're, pretty tough but they're, not durable by our standards, where you're crashing into walls. So nowadays at least you don't have to use the camera case anymore.
You save a little bit of weight, but still just stop it stop doing that. I mean it's just similar to this sort of make sense, because the high range of adjustability is more important than durability, because you don't crash cine whoops the same way that you crash five inch, freestyle drones. The same could be said for even like a larger uh cinema bass platform like a seven inch, maybe a long range quad or something something that's meant to do like filming, where you're not going to be crashing, but on freestyle or race frames. Yeah doing doing the the gopro mount with this thumb screw thing, not a good idea, so i agree: that's that's an fpv trend that needs to die what's. The next fpv trend that you think there's, one more there's, one more we're going to keep this video positive. But there's one more trend that needs to go and it's analog fpv needs to die. Can we just stop already with it? Just listen: i'm, not i'll. Tell you what i'm not saying i'm, not saying analog is dead so i'm. Being very clear about that, because i get it there's only one company right now that makes hd and you don't have the same sort of product selection. So i i get why it's not dead yet, but i think ultimately, i want to see more companies making hd fpv. I want to see hdfpv get smaller. I just want to see hd fpv keep getting better and better, and eventually i want to see analog fpv.
Just can we turn it around there? We go turn it around. You know when you first said it. I assumed you were about to shill for dji, but you didn't, no just said analog needs to die and i think that when you look at the technologies that are coming out, whether it's dji or it's fat shark bite frost, i think it's clear that analogs days Are numbered and i think, it's clear that digital is the way of the future and i'm not saying it needs to be. I will get to die today and i'm, not saying it needs to die, because people need to throw their analog gear away and just buy dji. I get it if there's other gear that you want to use that's smaller, lighter you want to support other, like that's. Fine i'm, not arguing against that, but i do look forward to more hd options coming out and i think that that is what is going to happen. There is one trend in fpv that is so pernicious. It is so overdone and usually done poorly and it needs to die drift videos, people you need to stop chasing drift cars with your questions, you're i'm, tired of it. If you're going to chase a drift car, i disagree there, you better be jump cars. All you want baby chase them all. You want just donuts, just don't post it. I don't want to see it just probably stop most. I don't want to say overdone, but the most done, i'll say heavy thing: it's an overdose it's overdone.
The first time i saw drift drift fpv, i was like that's, the coolest thing. I'Ve ever seen the 57th time i saw it. I was like okay uh. I think i've seen this before, and then i saw a few really good pilots do it. I was like, oh, i see there's levels here and then i saw 57 more people. Do it badly and i was just like: okay just do something else. The drip i don't know. If it's going to go away bartwell, i think the drift drift fpv is it's. So common it's almost become its own genre. We got, we got fpv racing, we got fpv freestyle, we got cinewoop and we got drifting it's just a thing now. You know another trend that needs to die flight videos with like 20 minutes of vlogging beforehand. Am i right, whoa whoa, whoa, whoa, we're gon na need to wrap this one up before barbell's on a mission now we're gon na need to wrap this one up guys so well that is gon na. Do it for this video. Those are 10 fpv trends that came and thank god, went a few. We remember. Finally, some were glad to see go and some you never even knew existed. Let us know down in the comments. What do you think we should have put on this list? What are we overlooked? If you say rotor riot died, i swear to god. I will ban you he's not kidding hit the like button subscribe to.
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