 What's up guys, welcome to Rotor Riot. I'm Joshua Bardwell, and to answer your question, yes, I'm still a Rotor Riot cast member. Right, Drew? Hey guys, this is Vladrivan. Yes, Bardwell is still with us. He just doesn't want to leave his house. So, if we can't get the Bardwell out of the house, we'll bring the Rotor Riot to him virtually. That's right. Drew, you told me that there was an episode we could make that would be very popular, very successful, that I could just sit here in front of my computer and not have to be uncomfortable or work. We're doing another episode where we are going to judge your FPV videos. This is kind of like our series of community spotlight where we're going to show some videos from the community, but it's a little different. We're going to show video. In community spotlight, we highlight videos and we just say nice things about people. But that's not my game. I want to judge people. I want to put numbers on their goodness and badness in criteria. Right, yes. Rather than just watching a bunch of videos and finding the best parts that we like and just trying to share as many different piles that you might not have heard of as possible, we're going to really critique these videos and we're going to judge them on some predetermined categories. The last time we did this, the categories reused were risk, difficulty, location, use of space, and production. Do we still like those categories? Yeah, I mean, they were super popular. What I like about these categories is it gets people talking and thinking about the different aspects of what makes a great FPV video. So like, for example, risk. The riskier the video is, the more excited I am to watch it. Wait, you get some points for flying over lava versus flying over grass. Absolutely. Whether that's risk to the quadcopter or risk to yourself. The more risk of something going catastrophically wrong, the more exciting the video is. And then, thinking about difficulty, you could fly somewhere very risky. Maybe you're flying up the side of a mountain. It's risky because if it goes down, you lost it. But if you're just cruising, it's still cool. We're just saying it's not really difficult in a sense. But also, location, we do want to reward you for that awesome mountain scape. So you get some points for location versus a boring soccer field. No offense to all the soccer field rippers. We've all been there. And regardless of where you're flying, use of space. Like, are you making good use of that space? Yeah. So there's great videos that have been shot over a grassy field. But as far as location goes, an epic mountain scape or as cool city or just a great location can make a great video. And then how do you use that space? Like one of the ones we looked at in the first video, there was a Bando, which was a really awesome location. But it kind of felt like the pilot was staying in one area and didn't really fully make use of the space. And then the last item would be production. What's something a little extra that you're bringing into the video? That's kind of tricky because you might actually want to give high marks for it being a raw video if the raw theme kind of fits. But then you also might want to give high marks if it's really over-edited and there's a lot of cuts and good music. It just depends. How does the production fit with what you're going for with that video? All of these things are up to interpretation. We're not saying that this is the only way that you could quantify or qualify a video. This is just something that we did before that we think works pretty well. So let's get into it. Well, that actually is what I'm saying, Drew, that these are objectively correct ways to judge an FPV video and our opinions are definitive. And anyone who disagrees with us can argue with us in the comments because he loves that sweet, sweet engagement. But who are we going to start with, Drew? I know who I want to start with. Okay, let's start with a Bardwell pick. You're excited for this because you just love to be so judgy. Who do you want to start with? So I'm going to start. There's an up-and-coming pilot. You may have heard of him. It's Slat FPV. And someone reached out to me just like three days ago and said, hey, have you seen Slat's new video? It's amazing. He's topped himself. I haven't seen it yet. So let's watch it together. Let's react to it. All right, my favorite FPV freestyle spot, all caps. So you know he means it. Weird yasmin climb rollout. Yeah, I like the smooth exit, but that yaw I did not like. Got a cut here. Got a cut already, but that was a nice smooth knife edge with the yaw. Little fast for a cut. I feel like I wanted that first take to go a little longer. Right. Have a little more. Nice, smooth. This is a cool spot. He's not lying. I want to rip this. Oh, is he going out? Whoop, pop it. There it is. A little gap there. Oh, I like that. Oh, yes. I like that. That was a similar trick that he did earlier in the video, but I like that one better. Which didn't kind of have bags like, should you show both of them? I don't know. Again, we're being really harsh guys. Make no question about it. We're just reacting. This is excellent flying. No doubt. Oh, I saw that. I saw that. That was sick. Oh, nice. Oh, that transition was hot. I see it. That's not my thing. I didn't like that. I like that a lot. That was smooth. That was really nice. It was well done. It's just not my taste. Power loop. Oh, nice, nice. He does those little kind of rolls like you do, but he's a little snappier and a little less sort of just pure flow. Yeah, I felt like back there for a second, he was definitely in a crash and I liked how he didn't panic. Yeah. And he hit it with something that looked intentional. Yep. You know. A lot of times I feel like I know what he's about to do and then he does something else, which I really enjoy. That's always really good, yeah. Like I'm like, oh, here he goes. He's going to power loop again and then he rolls out of it and goes some other direction. This section is a little, a little, oh, nice. Oh, I like that. I like that. That's a good move. Like an entry to a trippy spin. It's kind of like an entry. Oh, sideways, sideways. Nice. Very nice. Yeah, he does that thing where a lot of the rolls he over rotates, but then like just turns into a turn, which I like. Yeah. You know, some of the, if we had a judge on here that was maybe more focused on like technical execution, they might want to see him prove that he could stop flat. Yeah. But it's not, that's not really a skill I even practice that much. His style reminds me a lot of your style in that it's focused a lot on lines and flow. Right. And keeping moving. But he seems to. Make it, make it. Yes. He seems to put a little more technical and tight stuff in. Whereas you tend to focus a little more on stretching the lines out like that. Super. Yeah. That was super nice and tight. I like this song too. How's his symmetry? Very nice. Very nice. Yes. How's his symmetry? Does he go left as often as he goes right? I don't know. I hadn't really thought about it. Maybe that's good. Oh, nice. Oh, I wanted him to go around again. Was that a mistake that he covered? I don't know. I have to say. I really liked those awnings he did the dives through and I wish he'd. Oh, that's sweet. Serwell. Serwell was nice. I really liked the awnings that he did the dives through. I kind of wish he'd gotten there sooner in the video and maybe spent more time there. I feel like he's focusing on a lot of the same areas. Oh, I like that little crash recovery. He flew out of it. One of the things I like about Slat is the density of tricks in his videos. There's very little dead space in his runs. Yeah. He's just constantly doing stuff. That was cool. Really dig it. Straight pinball. Still going though. Wow. Never quit. Pinball to recovery. All right. There we go. There's the man. All right. That was, first off, let me just say that was an excellent rip. Slat is a really excellent pilot. Very impressive stuff. However, the point of this episode is to really try to be critical here. So as we were watching, you know, heard us being a little bit, a little bit harsh. And, you know, we're not going to hold back on some of these reviews. Let's just, I just want to make it clear that I'm a really big fan of Slat. We're going to dig into it a bit. So thumbs up. Let's talk about things we liked. Okay. Like I said, the density of tricks. It almost never feels like he runs out of things to do. At the same time, he doesn't have a feel of someone who is just wildly flippy flopping just to keep moving. It's a really good balance. I did think, I did think at times it got a little excessive. Like that opener yaw movement really didn't like that. And it, if I was watching it, I might have clicked away because it was so disorienting and so abrupt right up front, just kind of in the open air. Yeah. So that I didn't feel like was a strong opener, especially because once I got into it, I was like, once we were watching the video, I was like, oh, this, he's doing some, you know, good stuff. And the only other time there was like, time we did like a double or triple roll, just kind of an open air again. I was like, yeah. But on the flip side, I feel like you could tell he was just having fun. Oh, for sure. So if just like, that's fun. That's fun. I would say the opening, the yaw opening, I'm neutral on it. I like the fact that it tricked me a little bit. I like when I think I know what a pilot's going to do and they do something else because it means they're being creative. And when he did the initial yaw, I was like, okay, he's going to do a 360 yaw and keep going. And instead he keeps spinning and I'm like, what is he doing? And he's, and then when he comes out of it, I realize he's climbed, which I kind of didn't notice him climbing. But then he flips out and then he just cuts away. And it felt like, well, you know, why'd you even show that? Yeah. If that had been the intro to a really long line, it would have been maybe more fitting. I wanted it, I wanted to go somewhere else with it, like before you cut away. I think you should open with a longer run. And if you've got like a really good trick that you want to slice in, it needs to go in the middle. Yeah, I believe, I believe in the hook. You start with something that really hooks you. So let's, let's get into it. So risk, what do you think risk? The fact that he's flying in a concrete cement asphalt area, means that it ups the risk. It ups the risk. If you go, if you're flying over a grass field with trees, if you crash, you're much less likely to like break something. Here you crash hard. You're probably going to break a motor bell or bend a shaft or something, maybe break an arm. So I think we're at least a two or three on the risk. But there was no risk of completely losing your quad. Right. I didn't really feel like. It's going to recover. I felt like they could get everywhere, you know, so that, yeah, you weren't really going to lose it. You were going to damage it. So it's not a one because of, I'd call a one a grassy field. Yeah. I agree with two or three. I feel like he deserves a little bit of a multiplier or a bonus to risk because of the difficulty of the tricks he was trying and difficulty is its own category. But if you're going to do like a, you know, a roll through a tiny, tiny gap, that's maybe a little bit higher degree of risk than if you simply fly through it slowly. Right. So maybe a three on risk. Yeah. So that's why I would, I'd probably even keep it down as a two. So you give it a two for risk. I give it a three difficulty. I mean, this is, this is one of those sites that you watch the video and you go, I could do that. And then you actually go to fly it and you're like, oh my God. Yeah. There are, there are a lot of spots like that that you watch it and you're like, oh, I want to go there. I want to tear it up. And then if you get the chance to go there the first time you go there, you realize that, oh, they went there a couple of times to get some of these lines down. This is not a show up in shred. Okay. So, and I did think that a lot of the tricks that he was doing was difficult. I think in particular there was that power loop or it was like, it was just through what looked like the smallest gap and it was like a rolling power loop thing. I don't even know exactly what it was. Yep. So bonus points for that. And I think you also get bonus points difficulty for exactly the reason I was just describing where it's like, hard to even put your finger on what he's doing, which I like a lot. Like, I like when it's not like very clearly like, oh, that was a roll. Oh, that was a power loop. Oh, like everything is just kind of blending together in, like you were saying density of tricks. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think that sort of technical nature of the flight and his, his in going into a lot of tight spaces sort of without fear, without hesitation repeatedly, absolute degree of difficulty. So where do you, where do you put them on the scale of one to five? Three or four. It's, I want to go four. I think three or four as well. And I feel like probably I'm like, I don't know what a five would be, but I think I feel fine given a four. Let's go fours. Four. Location, quality of the location itself. It looks like a very fun spot to fly, but didn't necessarily create the most visually appealing results. Does that make sense? Like it's a parking lot. It's a building. Like I love flying those spots, but I never really love the resulting video. Yeah. It's a, if you were to go fly the pyramids of Gaza, Gaza, Gaza, then that would be a five out of five location, even though all you're doing fundamentally is a building dive down a pyramid. Right. So it's a solid freaking office park. I would love to fly it, but it's like a three. I think in terms of. Yeah. Two or three. I could, I could agree with a, I could agree with a three on that. Yeah. It's like a solid average good FPV spot. Yeah. That's definitely a three. Like I would like to get an FPV session there, but it's not necessarily a place that I'd be like, I got to get on a plane right now and go. Oh yeah. So by the way, it's Giza. Gaza is a different place. So use of space. This office spot, did he make the best use of it? Well, I feel like you're going to say he didn't because while we were watching the video, you thought you were like, well, I feel like, you know, he's being a little repetitive. But again, I would say. Like he goes behind the trees. He goes over the parts that he did use. It really felt like he rung them out. Uh-huh. And so I would. I agree with that. I would give at least a four, maybe a five on use of space. I would agree it did have good use of space. I think what I was actually complaining about was the choice of clips that he put in. So maybe we'll get into that when we talk about production. But as far as like the flying goes, use of space seems like he flew everything there. He did really good tricks with the obstacles that he flew. There was no point. There was no point that during the video, I saw something in the background and I was like, oh, go over there. That's better than what you're doing. That never happened. Exactly. Exactly. I'd say for use of space. Yeah. For what would it take for somebody to get a five? If that wasn't a five, what would have made it a five? That's a good question. For that spot, what would it... It's tough because is it a production or is it use of space? Like, I feel like, you know, you only went through the awning one time. He focused a little bit too much on kind of that central area. So more balanced, but you know, that feeds into production too, like which clips you put in. But how about you want to do the five and I'll stick with a four? No, I feel good with a four. I feel good with a four. I was just curious. And now production. And I think we're going to have some different opinions on this. Oh, well, so production wise, I feel like it was a pretty straightforward freestyle video. Like there were no production elements. Like for example, there was no establishing B roll, right? Which it would be an element of production. I'm not sure that there was a color grade. Maybe there was. It didn't look particularly graded. I did like that one cut where he rolled the quad into the next roll. That was really smooth. There were some clever cuts that I think you really liked and I wasn't necessarily a fan, but I think I'll admit they were clever. I didn't notice it being off of the music, but I'm not sure that it necessarily was like tied to the music in a way that like a production-y way. So I feel like it's a three for production. For me, it was more of a two. You know, I agree the color grading was was kind of lacking. I think the video overall was just too long. Like very impressive flying. And I think I would have enjoyed it more if it left me wanting more. Because I feel like I saw everything he did. You know. Yeah. Some of it twice maybe. And I didn't love some of the cuts that you liked, but you know, that's a matter of opinion. I think that's kind of the difference between the three and me going with the two. Yeah. That's something I commented on before. In fact, I think I commented on it once in his video. And when you're doing a freestyle edit, you have to think as an editor, whether your goal is to show other freestyle pilots your freestyle. Or whether your goal is to create a piece of video, a piece of content that people want to consume. And so if your audience is other freestyle pilots who want to see what you did that day, you could show the same trick three or four times and like show how you got it a different way. Right. But if you're for a general audience and even for a lot of freestyle pilots who just don't have the attention span, he showed the same thing three times. And by the third time I see it, I'm like, yes, I know you can power loop through that thing. Overall, again, phenomenal pilot. I think going down the line, you gave him three, four, three, four, three. That's a 17 from Joshua Bardwell. I went two, four, three, four, two. That's a 15. So he averages 16. 16 out of 25. Right. Yeah. 25. Yeah. It's pretty solid. Pretty solid. I think that's a really good place to start this video. Drew, there's one other aspect of slats flying that I know you're going to identify with. And that's the use of hypersmooth. Okay. So he uses hypersmooth. And he said that like the one time you have a bent prop and it ruins your take. That's one of the reasons he uses it. And I'm not one of those people who says hypersmooth is cheating. And I know you're not, because I know you freaking use it too. But it does give a certain, like he was doing those snaps off the wall where you line up with the wall and then you pop off like that. Yeah. And when you do those snappy moves and hypersmooth just shaves off all the edges. I don't know. I wish I could see one of his flights with no hypersmooth. Yeah. I think that just kind of comes down to, I don't know what category would really account for that. I feel like the hypersmooth debate is like, I just don't get it. Use it. Don't use it. I just want to watch a good video. And if there's something going on with the movement, whether it's a result of hypersmooth or whether it's a result of the piloting, then I think it dings you. And I didn't see anything in his video that I found objectionable that was resulting from hypersmooth or stick movement. It was good. Good flying. All right. Who do we got next, Drew? I'd like to watch a flight by window washer who is one of my favorite newer generation pilots. I think I'm partially responsible for his name because I was watching one of his videos in a community spotlight. And he just does a lot of dancing along the walls of buildings. Usually these buildings have a lot of glass. And I was like, man, window washing with his quad. And I think he took it and ran with it. So I'm honored that he took that name. And I'd like to honor him by judging his video. OK. All right. I got it queued up. You got it queued up. You ready to go? I'm ready to go. Fade with the blur. I'm not a big fan of the sponsor roll. I know you got to do it. Yeah. But I was really into that opening right up until the sponsor roll popped up. And then the sponsor roll, yeah. I was like, oh. Oh. I like, see? Oh. Again, similar with the yaw entry. And I like that better. Yes, tippy taps. Oh, come on. Come on. I love the way he plays with the walls. No, I like it. I like the tippy taps. Yeah. They felt very intentional. How do you feel about that transition? It is OK. It didn't take me out of it. Yeah. I always just prefer longer lines. Oh. Some of his little tiktoks feel like Johnny used to be. Yeah. Yeah. This is kind of like definitely some OG Johnny vibes. Oh, son. Yes. No. Yes. Oh. That was so sweet. That was so sick. It was so sick. The transitions are OK. They're not bothering me. I didn't even think about the transition. I was just enjoying that dive. I love this control. Damn, Gina. This is old OG Johnny stuff. Yeah. This feels like Johnny. Yeah. Oh, man. Window washer. OK. He's good, right? I mean, I knew he was good. I've seen his stuff before. I haven't seen him recently. He hasn't posted in a while. This video is his most recent. It's back from November 2020. So Charlie, if you're seeing this, please get back to flying. We love watching you shred, man. This is great. Smooth as heck. Does he have HyperSmooth on? I didn't like that cut. I didn't like that he cut in kind of the middle of what I would call a trick. Yeah. Oh, man. I like that. I liked how it looked like he was still climbing. Just using really good use of momentum. Yeah. Very good use of momentum. Really nice. Ooh. See those sharp stops? Yeah. HyperSmooth ruins that. You cannot do that with HyperSmooth. It's just an aspect of your flight that's completely missing. And the thing is you can be smooth without HyperSmooth, but you can't be sharp with HyperSmooth. See those little tick, tick, tick, tick? A little flavor, a little spice. It doesn't feel like they're corrections. It feels like they're embellishments like that. That, yeah. That was just definitely like it was like a flourish. Ooh. What the? What was that? I don't. How? I don't. It's like those little things that when you're a pilot yourself, you realize that like, ooh, that doesn't look how a drone normally moves. Dude. Like that was, I love that clever use of momentum. Yeah. To make it look like the drone is thrusting in a way that it couldn't. Yeah. Love his little, little, ticky, tick corrections. They're not corrections, but. So again, think about length. I've really enjoyed this video so far and I'm about done with it, but it looks like we've got a while longer to go. Yeah. I hear you. I'm still into it. I'm still enjoying it. Yeah. He could give us something, something new. I think something would help me with the length as if it was either more spots if you're going to be cutting or less cuts. I never mind the length, but it's like a really long run. Yeah. Man. He's in there. Like you basically did a grind on that. Oh. Oh, hey. No, it's the same spot. No, it's just a different area of the spot. Not bad. I like that. I also think about like the way he ticked there and gave us a minute to focus on that lamppost. That's nice. That's a nice move, but I, I try to be careful about like, what are you focusing on there? Like it was a lamppost. Like is that really the thing you want to tick back around? Yeah. I would rather have seen that around like a, you know, a car if you were chasing it or the corner of the building if you're doing freestyle. So now he's working this area over near the trees, but it doesn't feel like there's a lot to do here or he's not giving a lot here. And, and he keeps feeling like he's drawn back to the parking lot in the building. I like that over that, that rewind over the light post. Yeah. Parking lots are fun to fly. I dig it. Bringing the motors in here. That's a nice little production element. You get points for that. I like, I think it's sending. Yeah. Nice. Nice little rewind. Oh, okay. So initial reactions. There were a lot of moments during that video where I was really engaged, really impressed. I thought I was watching some really phenomenal flying. I think you and I both just lost our minds over that dive. That was great. Yeah. And I would have been fine if the video ended like three and a half minutes into it. Just the amount of cuts for being the same two locations, you know, keep it short and sweet. Again, leave me wanting more rather than leaving being like, all right, I've got, I've got my fill for a while. And you have a good point that like, I understand that as a, as a, you want to put a song out. Like you've got a song you want to, you like the music. And you want to, and you don't want to cut the song off. So you feel like the video is going to be five minutes. I like what you said that like you could put another location in. So you're mixing it up. I mean, you could do the same tricks in another location and keep somebody's engagement in a way that if you show the same location for five minutes, maybe some people will tune out. I felt pretty engaged throughout the whole thing. It felt like, well, it felt like at the end where he shifted to working the trees off to the side. It felt like there just wasn't a lot there for him to work with. And so it's like, oh, we're somewhere else. No, we're just kind of, kind of just, I got excited for a second. Why do you think we had such a big reaction? Like Slats video, I think objectively had a higher density of tricks. Uh-huh. And, and I would say that probably the difficulty of Slats tricks, there was certainly more opportunity for Slat to crash and less opportunity to bail out if something went wrong. But we had a really big reaction to window washer in a way that we kind of didn't to slap. I think that is. Yeah. Well, you know, and I want to be careful about comparing pilots because there sometimes there just is no comparing pilots. These guys have very different flying styles. They're flying very different types of locations. They're just all around going for a different thing. But at the end of the day, you're right. We had a real like reaction to that dive. And I think it was because it just didn't seem so straightforward. Like the setup was very unexpected and the location was just really cool. Like this big, beautiful glass wall was just really nice visual. And there was an elevated sense of risk because just felt like you're further out there. You're doing a building dive. You're over a construction site. Like it's going to be, it's going to be harder to get your quad back. Not saying it's irrecoverable, but definitely harder than just walking into the office spot that you're 25 feet away from. I feel like that style of flying plays with physics in a way that really breaks my brain. And maybe it's just because, like I watch Slatfly and I'm like, I feel like I know what you're doing. I'm not saying that I could do it, but I understand what you're making the quad do. Whereas I watch somebody like Johnny or Window Washer do that kind of weird physics. And the quad just goes, and I'm like, gravity just turned around. And I know it didn't. So sort of knocks me, knocks me off. There's a level of precision, a level of, I'm going to just freeze the quad and then drop on the wall. And I don't know. Yeah. Well, let's run down the list. So let's run down the list. I think that's a relatively low degree of risk. Okay. If you hit the building, you're going to bounce off. You're going to fly away. If you line it up wrong, you're just going to come back around and take another shot. I think, and if you crash, you're going to walk over to the bottom of the building where your quad has fallen and you're going to pick it up. To me, that feels like the main risk there feels like the ones where he's sliding backwards is a little riskier, but even then, if it all goes pear shaped, I don't think it doesn't feel like a very high degree of risk. So I also think an element of risk is how risky were the tricks. So he had a lot of altitude there. So let's say he did clip something. Fair enough. The quad is going to fall a lot further. So there's going to be a higher degree of risk from that higher fall. Also, if he did hit something, there could be, I don't want to say, property damage. There's some risk. I hate to bring that up. You're right though. When you're lining up those extremely close dives, the line between making it and hitting the building, you may not be able to go, oh, I haven't got it and bail out. So I mean, there's a degree of risk there. Well, I think for me, and I said the difference is just one step up above grass. And I think this is one step up above that parking lots are flying around those buildings elevated a bit more than office space. So I'd give this one a three. Yeah. And I would go the other way. If slats was a three because it was asphalt concrete and high. But the difference is that slat was really diving into tight spots constantly. Whereas window washer, it feels like he had more room to avoid error. So I would give him a two for risk on this one. Well, that's why you got to have two judges to balance you out there. So difficulty. How would you break this for difficulty? I think some of those tricks were really mind-bending. I think it's difficult to do that. There was a lot of things that made us go like, oh, what even happened there? And then that dive, man, come on, that dive was so sick. And that was very difficult. So I mean, I would give it a very high degree of difficulty only because I have tried to fly this style, that sort of physics defying style. And I can't fricking do it. I don't know for the people as a general how difficult it is, but I would give it a higher degree of difficulty. I mean, I feel like I would go with a four. I mean, I think just because I can think of a few things here and there that would elevate the difficulty. Like some of those building dives, if he had held them longer and just really come out skim in the ground, that I think would elevate it to me. He always plays a little bit higher up. The crane, when he sort of flipped into the crane and then dropped straight down through that to me, that's like approaching a five out of five difficulty. Yeah. This is a very strong for also is super strong for location. So I think this is again a step up from like a good average freestyle spot. So, you know, it's better than grass field one. It's better than, you know, a more technical area, but still boring too. It's better than like it's that solid office space, which is a three. So I would say this is a four, but no high. It's a high three. No, no higher than a four. Yeah, I agree. If like Slatt's office park is a three feels like that's a three than this beautiful glass walls, they're just much more visually appealing. I think that's got to be either a high three or a four depending on how you break it down. Let's be generous and give it a four. All right. Use of space. I feel obliged to point out that we are under no obligation to be consistent. If you go back and watch the previous video, you may see a similar site that we gave a three or a two to. Hey, we're just making this up as we go. And if you don't like it, tell us in the comments. Use of space. You know what, Drew, if he hadn't gone to the trees at the end of the video and then sort of had a lackluster result, I felt lackluster to me like the end of the video, the last minute and a half was kind of making nothing out of the trees in the parking lot. I wouldn't have, I probably would have given him a higher marks for use of space, but by introducing that tree spot to the video, now I know it exists. And then it was kind of, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I see what you're saying. You could have almost gotten a higher use of space by using less space and not letting us know what we don't know. And any situation like this where you're working mainly the same two or three sides of a building that feels like use of space is going to be of limited. So I think just this style of video doesn't contribute to a high use of space score. And that's fine. You're not going to win on every category. I think it's a three. A three. A three. Yeah. I don't want to, I don't feel like, I feel like a two would be punitive. Two, for it to be less than a three, I'd have to be like, dude, he didn't even dive the building. He was just playing with the trees the whole time, right? Yeah. So at least he did go to the cool element. About three. Three. Yeah. I think, what do you think of those transitions? I hated, I hate a sponsor role. The thing is, production wise, the opening of the video was was really actually quite good. Yeah. Like the music comes in, it starts on the black screen, it fades up to the, I was like, this is, I was really in the mood and really enjoying it. And then the sponsor role popped up and it completely snapped me out of it. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're going to do a sponsor role, put it at the end, right? Put it, if your sponsors allow it, put it at the end, because then I've watched the video, then you've already shown me you're a good pilot and I'm like, oh yeah. Right. Okay. Let me see what companies I should be interested in. Or honestly, and I don't actually think you should do this, but if you have to put at the beginning, put a card at the beginning for three seconds and then start your video, but then at least you haven't interrupted your video. Right. And I probably am not going to click away in the first three seconds. I like the music. I thought the flying was very in sync with the music. The transitions, I didn't hate. I think if you're not going to do a cut transition, then it's difficult to think of what else to come up with. But I thought the transitions were okay. Kind of autistic. I didn't think it hurt. Yeah. I think there may be a few too many of them. I just like longer runs. So again, I think it got long for how many cuts there were. I felt like it got kind of long. So certainly by no means it was a bad production, but you know, I would say three, two, three, two. I'm going to stick with two. I go three. I go three. Me too. Well, I've really liked the opening. I like the music. I thought it was in sync with the music. I give it a three. So let's see. Your overall score is 16. And my overall score is also 16, even though we arrived at those being split on a couple of these things. So you, you, you gave a lower score for a risk, but a higher score for production than I did. Kind of bounced the other out. Ended up at 16 again. Very respectable, very respectable score. It's interesting because like, I had a bigger reaction to some of his tricks. I feel like some of his tricks were more difficult than some of the stuff that Slat was doing, but because he was doing them in a safer location, it kind of balanced out the score. Right. And he didn't end up scoring higher. Yeah. And I think for like, there were a couple of times in the video where I was really into it and the, the, that one dive where I just really lost my mind. That was great. You know, I just got bored at the end. So I think this is fair. All right. This is fair. Next up, we have this video. You've picked this one. This is No Limits by Phoenix FPV. I picked this video because he posted it in the Rotorat community Facebook group. So that's how I saw it in the first place. And he had some kind words to say about what inspired his flying style. I'll just leave it at that. And I also wasn't you. I also wasn't it. I also really like the location and I think you'll know why as soon as we get into this. So let's just, let's just hit play. Immediately I like the color grade. The colors are very nice. Yeah. Strong opening. It's good opening. You know, I love lots of lots of tricks. Do you recognize this spot yet? No. You don't recognize this spot. Oh, it was so sick. Oh, it was so sick. Opening. This is Sharpew's spot. This is Sharpew's spot. Oh, my God. This is Sharpew's spot. Oh, my God. And it's so crazy to see it revisited with kind of more modern, higher level flying. I mean, again, no offense Sharpew is master for the day, but. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. These lines are amazing. Look at how long this run is. This whole run is still going. This run is still going. I don't even mind the tap. Extremely strong opening. I kind of like the tap. Oh, yeah. No, it wasn't a criticism. Got a mat. Oh, don't know. Okay. Can't go in there. You know, I. Yeah. Oh, high degree of risk here. High degree of difficulty. Amazing location stuff. Great variety of tricks. Oh, there was a cut. There was a cut. Yep. You try to trick it. You thought we wouldn't notice, but we did. Wow. Oh, wow. This is a high degree of difficulty. Oh, this video is so good. Wow. This guy's got his mat. He's down. Yes. Whatever you want to call him. Oh, knife edge. Excellent scene. No, because they're so. Great variety. They're so difficult and impressive. And he's nailing them. I'm not tired of seeing him. Love that variety where he's doing matty flips and just whipping out knife edges. Didn't see that one coming. Oh, I'm so into this. What just happened? What is going on? This is so good. Where's he going? There we go. Oh my gosh. Oh, tight power loops too. Yeah. Tight power loops too. No to the moon. I mean, he's really staying proximity. Finding every possible dive. Apparently. Geez. Nice. Feels like he's got a lot of cases where he sets up a power loop and then does kind of a double roll into it. There was another cut. Yeah. I mean, I think he's trying to cut in the same spot at the same time to, you know. Yeah. Interesting. There's a lot of power loop rollouts. Yeah. Mmm. There you go. You know what? Oh, get it again. Just as I was starting to maybe get a little board. Yeah. Yeah. Hook me back with that double dive through the teeny gaps. Yep. Yep. I like the ordering of clips. The sun is going down with every clip. So it's. Oh wow. Why? What? Stop it. Flip back out. Get out of here. Oh, leave me alone. Leave me alone. I love that. Yospin was super crisp. So just crisp. Here we go again. No light. Now the sun's gone. There we go. Little crash. Mmm. Mmm. Nice. Whoa. Now it's getting blurry because the light's gone. This video just has me grooving, man. What a great location. All right. It's the third time we've done that power loop through that hole. So it's getting a little bit of that. Hold on. Oh, there you go. Nice. Oh, and there's the sponsor roll. Great. That's how you do it. That's how you do it. Great way to end the video with the crash there or the inverted perch. The very intentional inverted perch. Oh, that was good. That was good. That was good. That was very good. That was really enjoyed that. So the only kind of semi critical thing I could say is it seemed to me like there were a lot of times where he would try to set up a power loop and be a little bit short maybe or not lined up how he wanted. And then he would kind of roll out of it to the left and it was smooth. Yeah. But it happened enough times that I started to notice it. And by the time I noticed something, whether it's whether you do an awesome trick, you know, three times in a row or a rollout like that. By the time I notice it, it starts to distract me from the flying. Yeah. But there was an enormous number of extremely difficult and impressive runs that just cannot be very long runs. Honestly, my only complaint, I didn't like the cuts. I didn't like the cuts where I was like, are you trying to make it look like it wasn't cut, which I'm not necessarily opposed to. If you want to get really tricky, again, make a great video. I don't care if you cheat. I don't really care if you cheat. But if you're going to cheat, cheat well. And I could tell. So it's either like, either cheat better or don't cheat and make the cut more obvious. It was almost like, was that a cut or wasn't that a cut? So I didn't like the cuts. That's probably the only thing I didn't like. I thought the opening was a fence. So strong. It opened so strong with a long line full of difficult tricks. And each time he pulled a different trick like that Maddie, like he goes in and it's like, is he just going to power loop it? No. He mattes it, goes out backwards. And instead of cutting there, I'm like, yeah, I got it. He keeps going. That does another difficult trick. And each time I'm just more and more impressed and more and more sucked in. Extremely strong opening. Let's do this. Let's do this. What do you think? So let's see. It's a Bando. We don't know that all of those areas are accessible. A lot of times in a building like that, the stairs will be collapsed and you'll need to climb with a ladder or something to get to them. We don't know for sure. It's a concrete area. So they're definitely at high risk of breaking something. And, you know, there's freaking bushes and wasp nests and snakes and all that BS. I feel like this. And also he was constantly hitting tiny gaps and stuff. I feel like this feels like a four, maybe even a five of risk. I guess it's probably not a five. I agree. I mean, maybe you could get to every floor and the risk is actually low in terms of losing your quad. But you can't tell from the video. And I think it's about what do you get from the video itself? Like, I don't need to know the whole story. I don't need someone coming at me like, well, actually they have ladders and they can get everywhere. Like when I watched this video, it seemed risky. Exactly. So it's about your perception. It's about your experience as you're watching it, not the truth. And it was concrete. The edges were jagged. It looked like the, even though concrete is concrete, the concrete at a Bando when things are just crumbled just looks, looks harder to me. It's glass. It's glass. Homeless people want to shank you. The only reason I wouldn't give it a five is because the chances of completely losing your quad or maybe it's a five, I mean, you could be injured. I could agree with a five. I'm going to go with a four because there was nothing that made me think like, ooh, if you messed up there, you definitely lost your quad. All right. I'll go with a four. Four? Yeah, I'm going to go four. Four. If there had been something that I felt like, even just for a moment down like, ooh, that was kind of close. And if you screwed up, it was gone. It would have been a five. But this is super strong for I want to give it a five. I want to be as far as I can be. Difficulty. Difficulty. Five. Okay. Yeah. Just five. If that's not a five, what's a five? Long runs full of extremely difficult tricks. Yeah. The long run did it for me. Great variety of tricks. Like I said, we was doing power loop to Matty coming out of it and the knife edging. Yeah. So you had technicality. You had mind bending. You had a lot going on there. That's a five. That's a five. Difficulty. Location. Five for me. Five. I mean, no matter what you say about, oh, it's a Bando. It's number one. It's it's Sharpew's Bando. Exactly. I think it's like, I, it's that I'm kind of, I don't want to sound like I'm going back on myself. I'm like, well, what am I just getting from the video? I don't need to hear about the context. But like when there's that strong at a historical context, what is this iconic of a spot, a spot where for a lot of people, the video they saw there began their FPV journey, you can't ignore it. It's just, it's a five. It's a five location. I would, I would, I want to fly that spot so bad. I got to get on a plane. The history of the spot is part of your context, your experience of watching the video. Right. That's why it's relevant. But I would say that even if it wasn't Sharpew's spot, that is way more than just like a good office park. Yeah. Right. There's so much there. That would be a four out of five if it wasn't Sharpew's Bando. And it's a five. I mean, even if you're not an FPV pilot. That's exactly it. The color, it's such a compelling location. I think that's exactly it. If I didn't know anything about that spot, just seeing it totally uninformed, I would say it's at least a four because it's such an epic giant Bando. And really strong four. I'd want to give it a five. And the thing that pushes it over is that historical context. So it's an easy five for me. Yep. Use of space. Five. Five for me. I think he hit everything. He did. It was amazing. I mean, is there more to that spot? I don't know. I don't know. But yeah, I mean, so many of those dives into shafts going down up around, if there are parts of it that he didn't hit. I am so impressed with the parts that he did hit that I feel like it's got to be a five. Yep. All right. Lastly, production. This was the most lacking area for me. Well, sure. But that's only because the others were all fours and fives. I did notice that it seemed like it had a pretty good color grade. To me, that doesn't look like it was straight out of the camera. Right. So somebody put a little effort into the color grade. Color grade was excellent. I love the song choice. Yep. I was going to say that. I did. I mean, if you wanted to be super picky about the production, a like filmmaker would have managed to keep the motion blur more consistent. Like he would have pulled the, he would have pulled the ND filter off as the light went down or maybe there was no ND filter. I could say that, you know, it was in order of the day. So I got this kind of artistic idea that time was passing and that the increased motion blur was part of that, that, you know, communicating the passing of time. And as time passes, Bando's crumble, but FPV is forever. What do you give it for production? So what did bother me about production was that I could see some of the GoPro mount. I would like that to be cropped out or to do a little distortion removal to take that out. I really was bothered by the cuts because I was like, are you trying to trick me or aren't you trying to either trick me better or just don't trick me and just make it a clear cut. And that's it. So it wasn't a five out of five. Those two things dinged it down to a three, maybe a four. I could go, I could go a four. Four. I could go four. I could be picky about this one. So you're going to go four. That puts your score at 23 total, mine at 22 total, and this guy is coming out with a 22.5 out of 25. Possible. That's an amazing video. That's an amazing video. I mean, I feel like that's an absolutely fair score. Phenomenal video. I feel like I want to point out because when we've done this in the past, we'll watch a video that's like a really solid video and they'll get like a 17, which feels low. It does feel low, but it's not. But I mean, 12.5 is average. Yeah. So a 17 or an 18 is like, that's a solid video. Yeah. But this, this is a 22. Yeah. Right. This is a strong 22. And if I'd been a little more generous, I could have matched your 23, but you know, this is trying to be a little, trying to be fair just because I think anyone that's familiar with my videos will know that there are some biases for why I might want to, might enjoy this guy. So just going to try to be fair, try to be fair. 22.5. Excellent score. All the pilots we watched today are phenomenal pilots. I enjoyed watching all these videos. Guys are going to be links in the description to all of these pilots. You should definitely check them out. If we were even featuring them today, it's because we already recognize that they are, you know, really standing out in the community, really pushing the limits of FPV, really doing some impressive stuff. And so we just wanted to turn a critical eye towards it. So, you know, really dig into it, really turn a critical eye towards some of these flights, really dig into it, really try to judge them. And it's a lot of fun. And it's all meant to be in good fun. So I hope you enjoyed checking out these videos with us. Yeah. And thank you Drew for having me back on the show. Thank you so much for watching. Make sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. And right next to the subscribe button is a little bell shaped icon. You can click that too if you want. Hit the bell. Hit the bell. Hit the bell. And then we can notify you when we're posting things. And if you want to hear from us even more often, here's what you're going to do. You're going to go to Rotorite.com. And you're going to subscribe to our newsletter. That's how you're going to hear about our best deals. And that's also how you're going to be entered into monthly giveaways for our newsletter subscribers. So every month we're giving away stuff, whether it's a tool set or a goggle strap, or maybe a full blown air unit. Definitely check out the newsletter. Hit it up. Get the best deals. Get entered in the giveaways. Guys, thanks for watching. I'm the drip. I'm Joshua Parkwell. We'll see you next time on Rotorite.