Check out this drone footage.

[Tony]

Amazing skills, both rider and drone pilot.

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/next-level-drone-footage-with-antoine-buffart.html

[weisan]

great job!

[Veloo]

That is impressive.
Star Wars speeder bike kinda skills.

[Luwabra]

id be dead at the stump at :38 sec mark if not before

[phoenix]

Cool video, dudes got skillz. Had to mute the drone though.

[d_douglas]

I wonder where that was filmed? I would love to ride that but at a crawling pace.

[jghall]

Pretty cool. Whether the rider, or the pilot, pretty sure I'd be tree bound maybe 30 seconds in.

[charliedid]

I wonder where that was filmed? I would love to ride that but at a crawling pace.

New Zealand

[charliedid]

Cool stuff but I'd film that on a slight overcast day.

[ORMojo]

Very nice riding. I'm certain that I could make it down that run . . . only much slower and with less air!

I do wonder if that is truly 100% shot by a drone. Doesn't matter as far as the riding goes, just curious about the drone piloting.

I have a brand-new GoPro Karma drone hooked up to a GoPro 6 Black, and I have to admit that while piloting it is amazing, the "Follow Me" pilot-free autonomous feature is what I would use to shoot something like this. And based on my use of the Karma so far, the autonomous mode wouldn't have any problem following that rider, and certainly wouldn't have any problem capturing that quality, or better, of video (the video quality of the 6 Black, coupled with the GoPro gimble, is amazing, and I love that the gimble can be used on the Karma drone, or handheld, or mounted pretty much anywhere, so that the steadiness and quality of my GoPro videos have greatly improved since getting this setup.)

[Tickdoc]

Wow. As the rider I would've crashed and burned 10 times going down that. As the pilot I would've taken the rider out by hitting him in the back of the head.

[Idris Icabod]

What is the range of control on a drone? Kinda annoys me that some guy can stand a mile away and control a drone so precisely but Comcast can't supply me a router that can provide internet to my kids room from the kitchen!

[ORMojo]

What is the range of control on a drone? Kinda annoys me that some guy can stand a mile away and control a drone so precisely but Comcast can't supply me a router that can provide internet to my kids room from the kitchen!

The specs on my GoPro drone state a maximum distance of ~1.8 miles, and altitude of 10,500 feet. There is a Youtube video out there somewhere of a guy flying his 2 miles out and back.

But again, with the autonomous "follow me" mode on most of the higher-end drones, there is no pilot, the drone just follows the subject that it has locked onto.

[benb]

Really great footage, great riding, great trail.

If that is an automated follow mode I'd be amazed... I suspect that is just a world class drone pilot.

If that's automated it's super super state of the art. And the algorithm is even smart enough to take a different path to get a side shot?

Man that trail looks nice.. everything I ride has rocks and roots every 6" and to go that fast I beat the living daylights out of my body. (And still don't go anywhere near that fast) My next MTB has got to have more travel if I'm going to keep riding all our rooty/rocky stuff.

[pbarry]

What is the range of control on a drone? Kinda annoys me that some guy can stand a mile away and control a drone so precisely but Comcast can't supply me a router that can provide internet to my kids room from the kitchen!

I just set up a mid-range $ Netgear wifi range extender for a Comcast router and its working great, easily doubling the range and signal of the router at the outer edge of the previous range.

[Tickdoc]

Wow. As the rider I would've crashed and burned 10 times going down that. As the pilot I would've taken the rider out by hitting him in the back of the head.

Got a friend that is a professional drone pilot and his basic rig will go three miles and fly for nearly 30 min on a single charge. They have advanced to a pretty amazing degree.

[gasman]

I didn’t realize drones were so capable.

The rider has amazing skills.

[ORMojo]

If that is an automated follow mode I'd be amazed... I suspect that is just a world class drone pilot.

If that's automated it's super super state of the art. And the algorithm is even smart enough to take a different path to get a side shot?

I have no idea if it is autonomous or not. But maybe, if it is, the algorithm wasn't smart/quick enough to be able to react quick enough to the rider's diversion to the side trail, and instead continued on a more linear path before being behind the rider again as the two paths quickly merged? I could view that segment of the video either way - as an intentional or accidental side shot - whether the drone was autonomous or piloted.

[benb]

I'd just be really surprised if that was automated.

I've never flown the GoPro drone, but I have flown the DJI Mavic that practically bankrupted GoPro last year since no one wanted to buy the GoPro.

The Mavic was amazing but it couldn't do this, not even close. It can go places and stop/go around things but we're talking big clear sky with obvious large things for it to go around, and it did things like pickup altitude to stay clear from what I saw.

Not this "use the force luke" level of weaving through trees. Google "GoPro Drone follow me test" and you won't find anything like this.

Regardless of how they filmed it's a fantastic video!

[ORMojo]

I'd just be really surprised if that was automated.

I've never flown the GoPro drone, but I have flown the DJI Mavic that practically bankrupted GoPro last year since no one wanted to buy the GoPro.

The Mavic was amazing but it couldn't do this, not even close. It can go places and stop/go around things but we're talking big clear sky with obvious large things for it to go around, and it did things like pickup altitude to stay clear from what I saw.

Not this "use the force luke" level of weaving through trees. Google "GoPro Drone follow me test" and you won't find anything like this.

Regardless of how they filmed it's a fantastic video!

I don't dispute any of this, and like I said, I have no idea what is really going on with the filming of this particular video.

But one note - all of those problems with the GoPro drone not selling or performing well were with the 1st generation, and GoPro pulled it from the market. They released the 2nd generation (the one I have) just this past October (I think), and even at that release, stated that they were still refining some of the software/firmware, and the 2nd gen release didn't even include the follow me feature at first. The follow me feature, and other upgrades, are now available via download, and, while I haven't tested it in anything close to the forest conditions shown in this video, it has worked very well for me so far. And you can still find many owners of the new 2nd gen GoPro drone that don't even know that follow me and other upgrades are available to download, so I don't think online video examples have yet caught up to its potential.

Finally, for me, I bought the GoPro drone package, which includes the drone, a 6 Black camera, an independent stabilizer that can be used with the drone/handheld/mounted, a handheld mount for the stabilizer and camera that has been great for filming my kids activities, a very nice drone controller (easily the best controller I've used) with live-streaming video screen, a very nice backpack with external stabilizer/camera mounting options, and more goodies, all for $900. I got exactly what I wanted - a great new action camera, a good drone, and a lot of flexibility to use it in numerous ways (show me another comparable drone - which will easily cost around the same as this package - where you have a detachable camera that shoots full 4k video at a true 60 frames per second and provides all of these options).