These Drone Goggles Do Something VR Still Can’t

I put on a pair of goggles and looked around from a drone flying way above me, in real time. These are drone goggles, not VR headsets: one from DJI, one from Antigravity. You see the live feed from your drone’s camera while you fly, and because both drones shoot in 360, you can look in any direction. Right now there are basically only two setups doing this, so this Antigravity vs DJI goggles comparison covers both, from the moment you put them on to how immersive they are and which one makes sense for you. On paper they chase the same feeling of actually flying. In practice, one gets a lot closer than the other.

Antigravity sponsored this video. That pays for our time, not for the verdict, and where DJI does something better, I say so.

What these are

On one side is the Antigravity A1 drone with the Antigravity Vision goggles. On the other, the DJI Avata 360 with the DJI Goggles N3. They’re two complete drone setups, but I focused on the goggles, because that’s what you experience everything through, and I’m a VR veteran after all.

FPV (first-person view) means you wear a headset and see exactly what the drone sees, live. With a 360 drone you’re not locked to a forward view: you can move your head to explore the scene, with a few caveats. I’m new to drones, and I’ve had way more fun with this than I expected.

What you actually see

Both headsets show you a flat screen with black edges around it, a bit like watching a video on a TV in a dark cave. It isn’t full VR. There’s no depth, because both eyes see the same image. In a VR game you feel like you’ve become a character in another world. Here it’s more like being a pilot in a cockpit: you’re looking out, not living in it. But the moment you realise you can look anywhere around the drone, and that it’s real, is really cool.

Antigravity Vision

The Vision leans heavily into that feeling.

• Dual micro-OLED displays, 2560 x 2560 per eye, at 72Hz
• Pancake lenses and HDR10+
• About 90° diagonal field of view, with a squarer aspect ratio that feels taller and more surrounding

The image is sharp and vivid, with really nice deep blacks. There are three viewing modes: Immersion fills more of your view, Comfort zooms out with more black around it, and Wide is more like a TV screen. I prefer Comfort, because Immersion can feel a bit distorted at the edges without depth, and on longer flights that makes me slightly motion sick. That’s very subjective.

There’s also Virtual Cockpit, where you fly inside a digital skin, like riding a dragon with the real world still around you. There’s even a third-person view, and it’s way more fun than I expected.

DJI Goggles N3

The N3 is completely different: a single 1080p LCD at 60Hz with a 54° field of view. The optics are more like birdbath lenses, as in some smart glasses, where a mirror reflects the screen toward your eyes. You get a widescreen image floating in front of you that’s smaller, flatter and more contained, with no viewing modes to choose from.

The image isn’t as strong. You can tell it’s LCD rather than micro-OLED: colours are less punchy and blacks less deep. Side by side it’s not subtle, and going from the Vision back to the N3 feels like a downgrade. You’re still seeing a live feed from a drone, though, and that alone gives you the feeling of being somewhere else. It’s just a smaller window.

To be fair, it isn’t a perfectly equal comparison. The Vision is closer to DJI’s Goggles 3, which also have dual micro-OLED displays. But DJI doesn’t bundle those with the Avata 360 right now, so most people will end up with the N3, and that’s why this comparison makes the most sense.

How they fly

You really feel the different approaches once you’re flying. The Antigravity is far more intuitive: look where you want to go, press the trigger, and the drone follows. Within minutes you’re flying. It just clicks.

DJI is controller-first. By default it doesn’t follow your head. You tilt the motion controller and accelerate, and it responds, fast. The first time, it genuinely caught me off guard, and it’s a bit scary at first. There’s more of a learning curve, but I can already tell this is where you get really precise, cinematic shots.

Comfort, weight and battery

• Antigravity Vision. Around 340 grams, plus 175 grams for an external battery that hangs on a strap around your neck. That takes weight off your face, but the cable is short, which is a bit of a hassle when you move around. Antigravity sells a longer cable.
• DJI Goggles N3. Heavier at 536 grams, but everything is built in, with the battery at the back of the strap. It balances really nicely, so on your face it feels about the same. No cables: put it on and go.

The Antigravity is much smaller and lighter on your face. The DJI wins on convenience. Battery life is about the same on both, around 2.5 to 2.7 hours, and your drone battery dies well before the goggles do.

The features that matter

Antigravity Vision

• Fit. Built-in diopter adjustment from -5 to +2 and IPD adjustment from 59 to 72 mm, so you can dial it in without glasses.
• Passthrough. A black and white mode to check your surroundings without taking the headset off.
• External screen. One of my favourite features. It shows the people next to you exactly what you’re seeing, in real time. That sounds small, but it changes the experience, and you can’t really fly these without a spotter anyway. It also shows firmware update progress and alerts, and you can put a cat screensaver on it. Not a must-have feature. But it is.
• Video playback from a microSD card, with built-in sound, and it reads Insta360 files directly.

DJI Goggles N3

• Much simpler: no diopter adjustment, no IPD adjustment and no passthrough, so you lift the headset to look around.
• It fits over glasses, which matters. Less customisable, easier to just pick up and use.
• It also plays video from a microSD card, but you need headphones for sound.

Both

Navigation works the same way on both: the controller acts as a 3DoF pointer, like a mouse in the air. Coming from 6DoF VR controllers it feels simpler, but for this it works really well. Both also have one-tap defogging, with a small fan that clears the lenses quickly when temperatures change.

Range and latency

This part is crazy to me. You’re wearing a headset and watching a live feed from something that could be kilometres away. Not Wi-Fi in the same room. Kilometres.

On paper, DJI leads:

• DJI Goggles N3: up to 13 km with DJI’s O4 transmission. The Avata 360 itself supports O4+, up to 20 km depending on the setup.
• Antigravity: OmniLink 360, up to 10 km (FCC figure, so it may differ in Europe and other regions).

I haven’t pushed either drone to its limits yet. That’s something I want to test properly.

DJI also has the edge on latency: around 130 ms in its specs, against 150 ms for Antigravity. For casual flying I didn’t notice a meaningful difference, and both felt responsive. If you race or fly really precisely, lower latency matters more. For what I’ve done so far, mostly capturing shots and flying around, it hasn’t been an issue.

Coming from VR, this is the part that gets me. Wireless stability over this kind of distance is something we still struggle with in PC VR streaming. VR is far more demanding, with lower latency and positional tracking needed, but seeing this range and stability in a headset makes you wonder what’s next.

Ecosystem and price

These goggles belong to two very different ecosystems. The DJI Goggles N3 work with several drones: the Neo, the Avata 2 and now the Avata 360. Buying into DJI means buying into a much bigger drone system. Antigravity is newer and more focused. The Vision goggles are built for the A1, at least for now, and Antigravity is backed by Insta360, which shows in its approach.

The drones

• Antigravity A1. All about simplicity and freedom. Under 250 grams and foldable, so it’s the only 8K 360 drone that fits in a jacket pocket. It sticks to 8K at 30fps, with the idea of “fly first, reframe later”. Built for creators who want something light that goes almost anywhere without hassle.
• DJI Avata 360. More spec-driven. Dual 1.1-inch sensors capture more light and detail, it records 8K at 60fps, and it adds a 4K 60fps single-lens mode for traditional FPV shots. It also flies backward, handy in tight spots, where the A1 has to physically turn. But it’s over the 250-gram threshold, so it faces more legal restrictions depending on where you live. Where I fly, I have to take a test and get certified to fly it.

Prices when we made this video

• DJI Avata 360, drone only: $549
• DJI Avata 360 combo with Goggles N3 and controller: around $979
• Antigravity A1 with the Vision goggles and controller: from $1,599
• Antigravity Vision goggles alone: $849
• DJI Goggles N3 alone: $229 (the DJI Goggles 3 are around $500)

DJI is being very aggressive on price. More on the DJI side is on the Avata 360 page.

Antigravity vs DJI goggles: which to pick

Visually, the Antigravity Vision goggles are on another level: sharper displays, better colours, more viewing modes and better adjustability. It’s a much richer experience. The DJI N3 feels more like a flat screen in a headset, with lower resolution and a smaller field of view, but it still gives you that “I’m there” feeling, and at its price it’s very solid.

For the whole setup, DJI is clearly the better value: lower price, stronger specs and a more flexible ecosystem, with a steeper learning curve. Antigravity is the opposite: more expensive, but much easier to get into. You can start flying almost immediately, and the 360 workflow in the app is more developed thanks to Insta360.

My early take: if you come from VR like me and what you see while flying matters most, Antigravity makes a lot of sense. If you care about price, performance and precise flight control, DJI is probably the better choice. They’re both fun, just in completely different ways. I haven’t pushed either into racing or really precise flying yet, and that’s what I want to practise next.