Do You Have What it Takes to Race Drones? Find Out With the Official Drone Racing League Simulator!

Ever wanted to try your hand at racing a top shelf drone, but certain you'd crash it right away? Over a thousand dollars, down the drain. As ever, there's a better way.

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DRL is the world's largest and most pre-eminent professional drone racing league. You may have seen footage of their races taking place in specially built courses with pyrotechnics and other special effects, in such lavish and far flung locales as Dubai.

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Of course, the drones they race aren't your standard fare. These are some seriously high performance and consequently very expensive machines, capable of speeds up to 80mph. As a drone noob, you wouldn't want to jump right into test flying this bad boy, even if they'd let you.

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That's where DRL's official simulator enters the picture. Besides nailing the handling and physics of electric multicopter flight, you can use an actual racing grade drone controller with the sim. Soon it will undoubtedly work with VR, and possibly actual FPV goggles for maximum authenticity.

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It really feels like you're flying a drone. If you've ever flown even a small, entry level drone as I have you will be immediately struck by how accurate the handling is. It needs to be, as the finished game will be used to scout new ace pilots for real life DRL races. Do well enough in the game, and you might just get invited to fly with the DRL for real.

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Graphics are less than stellar, but then eyecandy isn't the point. There's a steep learning curve, made somewhat more approachable by the inclusion of three difficulty levels. In beginner mode the drone auto-stabilizes, limits how much you can tilt in any direction and otherwise protects itself from your bad decisions or first timer panic.The harder modes turn off these training wheels, letting you make your own mistakes.

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Tracks are scrupulously modeled off the actual DRL courses which the pros fly on. Again, they need to be. This is a game, but also a serious tool for pros to practice their skills, and to identify emerging talent out there.

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It's in early access right now and priced accordingly (free) so don't expect many tracks or more than one drone. The full version will have a wide selection of drones to choose from, as well as myriad options for customizing whichever one you main.

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The demand for such a simulator was so ravenous that the early access version was released in a really bare bones state. But what's there works superbly, and really gives us outsiders a taste for what it's like to race drones at the professional level.

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DRL: High Voltage can be downloaded for free from its Steam page. A gamepad at minimum is necessary to play it, due to the nature of the control scheme. I'd recommend this not only to drone racing fans, but anybody considering buying an entry level drone. It's a great way to find out if you enjoy flying drones to begin with, before you pull the trigger on that drone purchase.