DIY flyers have been slapping 360 cameras onto drones for years now. But what if said 360 camera did more than film sideways, slantways, longways, and backways? Insta360, maker of some of the most popular 360 cameras, has declared it’s now making a drone that promises “immersive” flights thanks to a camera apparatus with two fisheye lenses. If the stars align, this new drone will make its debut next month.
These new drones will sit under the canopy of the “Antigravity” brand. It’s not as if these drones will hit suborbital flights. Instead, they’re meant to pack a full 360 camera. Insta360 says this will allow for “immersive” flights, which suggests users will be able to use a kind of AR goggles—like the DJI Goggles—to interact with the 360 camera. We can already imagine if your drone flight offered the same degree of view as if you were standing in front of the glass at the top of the Seattle Space Needle.
The typical 360 camera works by filming a sphere centered on itself—with the two lenses filming 180 degrees each. With this variety of cameras, it doesn’t matter how you orient the lenses to grab a shot. That could prove a benefit to filmmakers looking to capture footage on a banking or twisting drone mid-flight. The footage is often cut into a regular 2D aspect ratio you’ll watch on YouTube, though modern AR devices like the Apple Vision Pro can also play back 360-degree footage in an immersive way thanks to head tracking. The Antigravity drone may simply offer that capability in real time.
The drone itself will weigh in at below 250g, or 0.55 pounds. That’s about the weight of a DJI Mini 3S, which I’ve found is light and packs up well enough to take out into the field. The first Antigravity drone is designed to “replace the technical complexity inherent in both drone flying and 360-degree videography,” according to Insta360. That implies Insta360 is planning on some kind of immersive motion controls akin to a DJI motion controller. Insta360’s press release still leaves a heap of unanswered questions buzzing in our heads. We don’t know if this 360-camera drone will be as capable as the company’s latest X5, though it should be able to shoot in 8K resolution.
Insta360, the company most known for its 360 camera gear and its action cameras that compete with companies like GoPro, is planning for a coup of the largest drone maker in the world—DJI. That China-based company has been caught up in international sanctions that keep it from selling all its flying cameras in the U.S. In the last few months, DJI has reported that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been banning imports of its drones. DJI hasn’t been hit with any official ban, though that could change just before Christmas this year. Last year, Congress passed the Countering CCP Drones Act that required the government to review DJI drones for any national security risks. If it doesn’t happen before the end of the year, we may have a full-on ban of what’s still the most popular drone brand.
While competitors like HoverAir have faced less scrutiny, Insta360 would still have a little more room to make something that really stands out. The last groundbreaking drones from DJI were lightweight, portable designs like the ultra-small DJI Neo and the DJI Flip that folds up to look like a unicycle. Since the soft ban on U.S. imports, DJI has reportedly sold very similar drones to its own DJI Mini 4 under a different brand name, SkyRover.
Despite DJI’s regulatory woes, the entire drone industry could use a bit of a wake-up slap. Insta360 has a track record for experimenting with established tech, like the Go 3S with its magnetically attached lens pod, which offered a whole new use case for the typical GoPro-like camera. We’ll just have to see if Insta360 can avoid the same scrutiny as its fellow China-based dronemaker once we take to the skies in August.
