Liftoff: Micro Drones lights-up parts of my brain that haven’t been illuminated since I last dallied with Airfix Dogfighter. In the follow-up to Liftoff: FPV Drone Racing (a top-notch drone sim that has been pressed into service as a training aid by both sides in the ongoing war in Ukraine) you sometimes find yourself limboing under parked cars, darting through half-opened windows, and alighting on chairs, shelves, and sofa cushions.
At present the £16 Early Access sim comes with six* environments, two of which I’d classify as so-so, three as good, and one as amazing. All but one of the six come in two different forms.
For example, in its standard configuration ‘Sawdust’ is a deserted furniture workshop/showroom, dotted with the kind of naturalistic clutter that invites exploration and micro aerobatics.
In the ‘B’ version, we get to roam the multi-room space at night and after floodwater and looters have caused devastation.
Currently, my favourite environment has to be ‘Silver Screen’, a sprawling multiplex with several screens and lobbies, and adjacent multi-storey parking.
Whether racing against bots, popping balloons against the clock, or simply buzzing about in freeflight mode, aviating in this large, artfully decorated space is preposterously entertaining.
It helps that all nineteen models of customisable micro drones flyable in Liftoff: MD come with ‘H-ALT’ mode (altitude hold) in addition to more demanding/flexible modes such as ‘ACRO’ and ‘3D’.
When learning to fly saucer-sized quadcopters, maintaining altitude through delicate throttle management is one of the hardest skills to master. H-ALT eliminates this hurdle by automatically maintaining current altitude during movement. In effect you select your hover height with upward and downward movements of your gamepad’s left stick (this stick also controls yaw), and bank and adjust pitch with your right stick.
Thanks largely to H-ALT and its more attractive environments, Liftoff: Micro Drones, rather than Liftoff: FPV Drone Racing, is now my drone sim of choice.
I bought a copy of Liftoff around the same time as I bought a DJI camera drone—the latter is the Airbus to the FPV drone’s Pitts Special, and I wanted exposure to both. The Xbox controller attached to my PC is too clapped out for precise flying, but this article convinced me to pick up a proper FPV drone controller on sale for Prime Day and give it another go.