Antigravity A1 Hands-On: The First 360° Drone That Made Me Feel Like Flying Again

Hi everyone, welcome to 51 Drones. My name is Russ. When I got my very first drone back in 2017, what I remember most is that feeling of pure exhilaration and the adrenaline rush of seeing my world from above for the very first time. Even though I still enjoy flying my drones every time I do it, I haven’t experienced that same intensity of pure joy since – until now.

This is the Antigravity A1 360° camera drone, and it’s the first of its kind. I’m so excited to take you all along with me on this journey of a brand new experience.

In this first look, it’s not about the specifications or testing all the features and capabilities. This is about the experience and letting you all see what it’s like to fly it. I’ll show you everything that comes in the Infinity Bundle, give you a tour of the menu system and heads-up display, and then share what it’s like to experience flying the A1 for the very first time.

Antigravity A1 Key Specifications

What’s In The Infinity Bundle

The Infinity Bundle comes in a really nice bag with four compartments and two little pockets in the cover. There’s a pocket on the backside for propellers, cables, or whatever else you need. The drone comes in a hard plastic case that’s felt-lined, which I really appreciate.

When you pop the cover open and see the A1 for the first time, it’s stunning. The propellers fold straight out, no flipping upside down or backwards. It looks futuristic, like something Elon would design. The micro SD card and USB-C slots are on the back.

Here’s what surprised me: it’s a lot smaller than I expected. At under 250 grams (8.8 ounces), it’s regulation-friendly in most countries. You don’t have to register it in the United States unless you’re going to use it commercially.

The controller is unlike anything you’ve used before. It’s a motion controller with a trigger for throttle, and wherever you move the controller, that’s where the drone goes. Very intuitive.

With this kit, you get three total batteries. The high-capacity flight batteries give you 36 minutes of flight time per battery. The charging bank holds two batteries inside, and if you want to charge a third, there’s a button on the back that pops out an additional slot.

The goggles match that futuristic design. One of the eye pieces has an external screen so people watching you fly can see what you see. That’s a brilliant design choice. The soft foam is cloth-covered with a rubber seal at the nose bridge, and I’m happy to report there are no light leaks at all.

The goggles are powered by an external battery that hangs around your neck with a tether. You also get a quick reader for your micro SD card with USB-C and Lightning ports, four extra sets of props, a lanyard for the controller, and quick start guides for both the drone and goggles. I really appreciate having instructions on paper rather than having to pinch and zoom on a phone.

The Menu System And Heads-Up Display

The user interface is comprehensive but well-organized. On the left-hand side, you have return to home. There’s also a return to home button on the controller that you can hold to bring the drone right back to where you launched from.

Deep Track is the focus tracking feature. As of the making of my video, this wasn’t active yet, but a firmware update enabled it. That’s typical for new products. Sky Genie offers seven intelligent flight modes that are pretty basic but fun to explore. Sky Path is your waypoints mission system, and it’s really easy to set up.

At the top of the screen, you’ll see safety settings including return to home altitude, obstacle behavior settings, and maximum flight altitude (which is 120 meters in most countries). I couldn’t find a way to change to imperial units, so we’re using metric just like the rest of the world.

There are two flight control modes. FreeMotion Mode is how you’ll fly this drone most of the time. How you move the controller is how the drone behaves. Lift up, it goes up. Push forward, it goes forward. It’s incredibly intuitive. If you’ve never flown a drone in your life and put this controller in your hand, it just feels natural.

FPV Mode is for more advanced pilots. If you’ve never flown FPV before, I recommend staying in FreeMotion mode when you first get this drone.

The gallery lets you access everything you’ve recorded, and here’s something really cool: even though you were looking in a certain direction while recording, you can turn the goggles and look around independently when reviewing footage. You can observe all around you even though it may be different from what you recorded. That’s amazing.

The Flight Experience

This is what the Antigravity A1 is all about. It’s about experiencing flight in a way you never have before.

When you look at the screen, there’s a plus reticle showing where you’re looking with the goggles. The hexagon indicator shows the drone’s heading. Your view in the goggles and the heading of the drone are independent of each other. I can point the drone to the right and look to the left. This separation is one of the trippiest things about flying this drone.

When I flew up and looked down, it actually felt like I was standing on a tower looking down and seeing all around me. Tell me this is not an incredible experience. Being able to just look around and see in every direction is something else. I let my visual observer check it out because he hadn’t seen it yet, and he lost his mind.

The hardest thing to get used to is realizing that you don’t have to have the drone pointed in a certain direction to look that direction. You can freely look around and experience an immersive world all around you.

Virtual Cockpit: Kids Will Love This

When you turn on Virtual Cockpit, it goes into FPV mode and puts you on top of a dragon. Yes, a dragon. I had my son try this, and watching him fly while riding a dragon was incredible.

If you look on the front of the goggles, you can see what the wearer is looking at through the external display on the left eye. So I could watch him flying on top of this dragon in real time.

The hard part is that Virtual Cockpit uses FPV mode, which is a little harder to fly. But if you have a kid, put these goggles on them with the Virtual Cockpit feature. Oh my gosh. Very, very fun.

Editing With Antigravity Studio

The Antigravity Studio app is the software you’ll use on your computer to edit the 360 footage. There are three different recordings you can work with: the screen recording from the goggles with the heads-up display, the pilot recorded view that captures exactly where you were looking (this footage is baked and can’t be edited), and the full 360 footage where you can edit any perspective you want.

Editing 360 footage is straightforward. Position the perspective where you want it, click to add a keyframe, move forward in the timeline, adjust your framing, zoom in or out, and add another keyframe. The software interpolates between them smoothly. You can export in H.264, H.265, ProRes 422, or 422 Light.

Final Thoughts

That’s a brief look at the user experience of flying the Antigravity A1. You saw it from my perspective as well as my son’s perspective. It’s so fun and it’s all about having that joy of being in the sky and seeing all around you. It’s a rush.

I’m going to have a playlist on this drone on my YouTube channel. We’re going to make a lot of videos about it because there’s so much to cover. I’ll go through the flight modes, show you how to set up a waypoint mission with Sky Path, walk through the complete menu system, and try some fun and creative things.

Subscribe to the 51 Drones channel if you want to see more on the world’s first 360-degree camera drone because we’re going to have a lot of fun with it.

Thanks to Antigravity for sending me this drone and allowing me to make videos about it to share with all of you. Have a great day everyone, and as always, fly safe and fly smart!

Watch more drone reviews and tutorials from Russ at 51 Drones on YouTube.