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Parrot Fires Another Shot In The Drone Wars With The Bebop Drone

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Quadcopters, or Drones as we call them nowadays, are starting to seep in to our daily lives. Once the realm of the military and civilian hobbyists, now drones are looked into doing some tasks such as delivering the mail or parcels. These days, the most familiar roles that drones play are what they've been initially been designed taking video taking for surveillance/intelligence or movie/video making.

We're seeing more and more airsoft footages taken with drones, and there are more players getting into this market. Not only are the new offerings just flying drones, they come now fully packaged with their high definition cameras. No need to buy the drone and video camera separately, with the each made to work with each other seamlessly. Less headaches on which drone or camera to buy for the user.

One of the pioneers in the offering affordable drones with cameras, Parrot, has unveiled their latest offering, called the Bebop Drone. The Bebop Drone is an improvement of their civilian drone technology and may be the next in the evolution of the AR.drone of the company.

The AR.drone was a good drone, but the 720p video and lack of image stabilization just didn't cut for some requirements of those wanting to take good aerial shots when there are already some Drones that come with stabilizers and can carry even better high definition cameras such as those from GoPro. The Bebop Drone now comes with 1080p HD camera (though most action cams now are going 4K) and and with 3-axes smart stabilization to  make sure that it will take smooth video footages for you.

Bebop Drone also comes with GPS and allows the user to set waypoints and can fly and forget as the drone follows the waypoints.

One of the best features of the AR.Drone is the controller features as you get the same view as what the drone sees. This is further enhanced with the Bebop Drone with the introduction of the SkyController giving you more controls with the dock for smartphones and tablets. And you can attach the SkyController to First Person View (FPV) Glasses such as the Oculus Rift, Zeiss Cinemizer, Epson Moverio, or Sony Personal Viewer. You get a more cinematic view of what Bebop Drone sees with its 180-degree HD camera. The Freeflight application will be at version 3.0 and its ease of use makes it flying this drone with a first person view fun.

With the extended range pack,  the Bebop Drone can go further up to 2 kilometer, this is a " super pack with included Skycontroller and more batteries. Parrot Skycontroller brings a hobby-grade remote with a powerful Wi-Fi range extender, a Smartphone or tablet dock and HDMI video output for easy FPV glass pairing." This means you also that can cover a lot more ground if the airsoft AO will be over a bigger area.

Before you pull out your wallet to place your order, you've got to wait a bit more as it is expected to be released on the 4th quarter of this year. No idea on pricing, but since it's still way off, you can have more time to save up for this.

With the releases of improved versions of the other video drones, such as the DJI Phantom, Parrot will have to up their game to either match or surpass what others offer. Will the Bebop Drone meet the requirements of the airsoft videographer? We'll find it when it gets released late this year, and we'll probably see more footages with this new drone in early 2015.

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