DJI Goggles 3 & DJI Air 3 First Flight With RC 2 – How Is This Helpful?

Now, I’m not sure if you know this, but the DJI Goggles 3 that were released with the Avata 2 are fully compatible with the DJI Air 3 and the Mini 4 Pro. So the theory is any drone that runs OcuSync 4.0 can make use of the Goggles 3.

Previous drones like the Mavic 3 Series and the Mini 3 Series could use the Goggles 2 and the Goggles Integra as a headset, but the caveat was you needed to use the motion controller when using the goggles. You couldn’t use a standalone or regular controller like the RC or RC-N1. But now you can.

Flying with the Air 3 and Goggles 3

So with the Air 3 right here, I’ve got the Goggles 3 linked up. And when I take off, I’ll be able to use the RC-2 in order to fly the drone and use this to shield my eyes from the sun. Now, why would you want to use this? Why would you want to use goggles on a GPS-based drone? I know that is what everybody is thinking.

This here is my first time flying using this setup, so it’s going to be a little bit of a learning curve. But I can say from experience, flying with a set of goggles really does just make the experience more immersive and also more comfortable. Look at me right now – I am squinting because of the sun. Being able to look down at my controller sure works, but how nice would it be to have my head up, be nice and comfortable sitting here with the sticks in my hand, and also be able to see the screen in full high resolution, nice and bright here in the goggles?

Taking Off and Recording

Let’s go ahead. I’ll drop the goggles down over my head here. I’m going to go ahead and swipe down, and if I can find the controls here, I’m going to go ahead, swipe down, press record. So now we’re recording in both the goggles as well as on the drone.

I’m going to turn on goggles defogging because it is a little bit hot out here, so now the fans are turning on. Now, usually with a flight like this, I put the full screen as the drone camera so you guys can see the drone in full resolution. But this go around, I’m just going to show you the view inside of my goggles, because things do look a little bit different.

I’m going to go ahead, prime the motors, and take off. And I have to say that this view right now sure beats leaning over, looking at my controller, and having to kind of cut through the sun. I would sometimes actually have to shield the controller from the sun in a way, like find some shade or even fly from my car. But now I have a nice full view here of the actual screen.

Flying and Navigating

Let’s go ahead, we’ll buzz down all the way to the bridge. I’ll go ahead and flip into sport mode. I have to say that, you know, in terms of my first flight here, it just feels so comfortable and it feels so nice to be using the regular sticks.

Sure, it was great on the old drones with the old goggles – Goggles T, Goggles Integra – that I could fly with them, but I’d have to use the motion controller. And as a lot of people know, the motion controller is fun, but it’s not going to be the way that you can get the best shots, especially on a GPS-based drone. Again, it’s cool that it’s all compatible and you can use it, but personally, especially on a GPS drone, if I’m trying to get these nice, smooth cinematic shots, I want to use the actual sticks here.

Zooming and Camera Controls

I was hoping we’d have a little bit of movement from the trains here for our first flight. We do have some kayakers down here. So from here, if I wanted to zoom in, that’s a little bit difficult. I could go and zoom in like that, but it only puts me to 3x. It’s not going to let me go and switch over to the 70mm, and I’m not sure if I would be able to do that. There’s no actual physical button I think that I can push, unless I actually customize something.

As I can see inside of the goggles, there definitely are some things missing right off the bat. From my remote controller, I can press record, I could switch my flight mode. So here I could switch to normal if I want to, or I could switch over to my sport mode to get a little bit faster here. I still have my center point there in the middle of the screen. I suppose I could probably turn on the grid lines as well if I wanted to. To shoot the camera down, I could use my custom button on the back – shoot the camera down, shoot the camera up. So all those controls are still there.

Missing Features

The one thing I am missing though is the vision assist and the map. Think about it – if I’m inside of the goggles right now, I would love the ability to use vision assist to be able to bounce around. And if I’m flying directly to the left, be able to see what’s right to my left by looking in the bottom corner.

Flying and Maneuvering

Now, let’s go ahead and do a quick little reveal here, up and over. But I can just tell you right now that this is such a more comfortable experience flying the drone.

Alright, we’ll get nice and low, shoot the camera down, shoot the camera up, go ahead and fly up and over. Yeah, the sun is beaming on me now, but it looks nice and cool.

So yeah, I mean, I can just say like right now, as I turn around and fly back, we are in a little bit of shade here. But if I go and pull my goggles off, it’s still bright and squinty. But going back inside of the goggles just makes things so much more comfortable. Got to get a nice seal on my face here.

The Goggles 3 are also great – they’re such an improvement over the Goggles Integra and the Goggles 2 in my opinion, in terms of the fit.

Reasons for Using Goggles 3

So like my main reason for using these goggles is not for this immersive level of flight. I do feel like I can see better, I do feel like I can make out smaller wires or obstacles better if I needed to. But I’m not flying this like an FPV drone, I’m not flying this like the Avata. I don’t need to be right in the cockpit, in a sense of like having that first person view. But it’s more so just shielding the actual sun from my eyes.

Landing and Next Location

Okay, so this was our first flight here. I actually have a job that I’m going to run to, and I want to give these goggles a try at the job, like actually using the Air 3 to buzz around, take some photos, take some videos, and just kind of look at what’s going on. In fact, if you caught my previous video with the Avata 2, you’ll notice a familiar location.

Thoughts on Using Goggles

So I’ll tell you what – I just did a job on the way over here, flew the Mavic 3 Pro, didn’t have any goggles. I was out, the sun was beating down, even on the RC Pro that has a brighter screen, and I really wished in that moment I could have used the goggles.

So I went from using the goggles for the first time to a flight right afterwards that I couldn’t use the goggles, and I wish that they were there for me to use. So at least having the option is definitely cool, to be able to use these things.

Flying at Penn’s Landing

I’m going to go ahead and throw them back on. We’re back down here at Penn’s Landing, so I’ll hit confirm, swipe down, record. We’re now rolling here on the drone.

I’ve got some thoughts as well that I kind of thought of on my way over here to this next spot. Now, real quick, let’s go ahead, take off, buzz up and out. And if you remember, just a couple of days ago we were here and I crashed my drone, hit some rebar. It was the Avata, but okay.

More Thoughts on Using Goggles

So here’s some things I was thinking about kind of as I was driving over here. First of all, how do we set our exposure? Well, just like you do on the Avata 2, if you go and push up, it brings up all of your camera settings. From here, I’m actually going to go and take this off of manual. Usually for me, I’m somebody that likes to keep control over my shutter speed value and stuff like that.

Now here’s the thing – how annoying is this going to be to change on the fly? Usually when I’m using my drone through the controller, I just change it on the touch screen. But now I’m going to have to remember to continue to change it by actually reaching up on the goggles. So that’s one thing that could be annoying.

If you guys missed the previous video with the Avata 2, they have made some significant improvements here. But this is Penn’s Landing, this is the amphitheater that they’re tearing down. You can see they have some machines running right now and they’ve torn down a really good portion of the building here. You can see they’re spraying water, you can see they’ve got like three, four machines running here, trying to pick up some of the rubble.

And guys, I’ve got to say that I’m loving being able to see everything crisp, sitting up high here without having to slouch over. The RC-2 has 700 nits of brightness, which is good, don’t get me wrong.

Here’s the one thing – your situational awareness gets cut. So right now, without vision assist, I’m not able to look left, right, or backwards. I’m kind of moving as I move from side to side blindly, I guess you could say.

Also, I mean, you know, can’t just look directly at the drone when you’re in the goggles. You do have the picture-in-picture option, but the cameras on the outside of the goggles, in my opinion, are kind of a gimmick.

So I find this as like a trade-off. I feel like sure, it’s nice that I don’t have to compete with the sun and I get this nice bright view, but I don’t have vision assist, I don’t have full situational awareness. You know, it’s going to be kind of annoying to have to change the exposure on the fly. I don’t even have a histogram on here, I’m just now noticing that.

Live Feed from Goggles

So there’s no histogram. I also don’t even have an exposure value, so I’m kind of just going off of what I think looks right. Now right now, we actually have a big cloud passing over, so my exposure probably is not going to change all that much. But these are just kind of little things I’m picking up as we go here.

The live feed from the goggles that I’m getting right now is much more, I would say, geared towards an FPV drone flyer. You’ve got your bitrate of your transmission data, you’ve got your connection from the RC, you’ve also got the transmission of like the downlink, so like the actual video feed that we’ve got. You’ve got the satellites. In my opinion, there’s much more important information to be had.

I mean, I guess I could swipe up and fly just with this here on the screen. And now I’m getting a reading of my exposure value, like now I’m at +0.1. That kind of just makes me want to bump over to auto and just kind of let it do its thing as we fly around here. Kind of starting to have second thoughts now. Wow, oh look, if I would have kept flying to the right, would have been a crash.

Second Thoughts on Using Goggles

Alright, I think I’m starting to have second thoughts here. In my opinion, maybe now the best way to fly your drone, your Air 3 or your GPS drone, is probably just sit in your car. Let’s see, let’s buzz down and check out what they’re doing.

Looks like they might be switching the bucket off of this… Oh no, looks like they’re just smashing stuff down here. Yes, so using a smasher to kind of break up some of that different rock. I feel so blind flying to the right and not being able to use vision assist. Oh, it’s a magnet! Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it looks like they’re picking out all the metal. Cool.

Even from here, I mean, I’ve got the zoom capability, right? But we’re using digital zoom at this point. I’m kind of wondering if there’s a way that I can switch over. I wonder if I go to the menu here, go to settings, control… There’s really not much in there. I’m not able to change any sort of customizable buttons or anything. Grid lines are here, I can turn my grid lines on. I do enjoy using those. Advanced camera settings, are there anything under there? No. So this is very, very bare bones.

Final Thoughts

Okay. You know, I remember in my previous video with the Goggles 2 and Goggles Integra, I called for them to make it available to be able to use the Goggles 2, but I was hoping for a more fleshed out experience. Now we do have the sun coming back here, which is nice. I mean, I’m sitting here in the goggles and I definitely don’t feel the pressure of the sun on my eyes. I think that that’s really the only main benefit, the only main takeaway from actually using the Goggles 3 here.

Okay, so look, this is a shoot where I actually have to like pay attention and actually grab some good photos and videos to use. So I’m going to end the video here.

I guess my final thoughts on the Goggles 3 and using them with the Air 3 is that it’s a good idea in essence, but I think that it could definitely be improved upon with future versions, and maybe even with a software update. I mean, this is something that DJI could easily fix in the future by giving us the ability to access the map, access general settings that we might want to get into, and also to be able to use vision assist. I almost slammed right into that crane as I was doing an orbit.

Okay, so this is my first impressions here of the Goggles 3 using the RC-2. I think it’s okay. I think they could definitely improve upon it, and I hope that we see future versions of the software for this goggle set, Goggles 3, get better and we don’t have to wait for a new Goggles 4 for the experience to become better.

Anyway, thank you guys so much for watching. Let me know your thoughts on Goggles 3 usage with the RC-2 and the Air 3, the Mini 4 Pro. And as always, I’ll talk to you later. Peace.