Parrot Takes Big Leap With AR Drone 3.0 - Bebop

Parrot's new AR Drone 3.0, called Bebop, is a big leap forward from previous versions. They have focused much more on the FPV and camera side of things, making it so you can receive video on the much talked about Oculus Rift - a headset that has two screens inside, one for each eye, that show a slightly different image to create a 3D environment.

Bebop has a 14mp camera with a wide angle lens that is able to pan and tilt. Bebop uses software stabilization instead of regular gimbal stabilization by utilizing the very wide 180 degrees fisheye lens to capture more video than you need and stabilizing the image by cropping out the parts you don't need to create smooth video, even in strong winds. How well this works in practice will be very interesting indeed.
Bebop has various options for controlling it, from WiFi through 5.8 GHz and 2.4 GHz antennas, as well as the add-on Sky Controller, pictured below, which also has the option to plug in video goggles.

I've always thought that Parrot AR drones look nice, but were too toy-like for me, but this 3rd iteration may just tempt me into giving one a try.

 

There will certainly be situations where using the Bebop will be more desirable I'm sure. Still, I don't think it will be a strong contender for the Phantom 2 Vision +. Having said that, the latter is around £1000, where the Bebop is likely to be less than half the price, probably 3-400 quid.