Antigravity A1 in practical use: 360° drone for video & Gaussian Splatting

The Antigravity A1 is one of the most unusual drones we currently use. Instead of capturing a fixed image area with a traditional camera, it films the entire surroundings in 8K 360° video. This not only changes the post-processing, but surprisingly also the flying itself.

We own the Antigravity A1 at Design4real and have used it themselves. This post is therefore not a mere data sheet summary, but an initial assessment of its practical application from the perspective of 360° video, XR, and Gaussian Splatting.

What is the Antigravity A1?

Antigravity is a drone brand built by Insta360. The A1 combines a dual-lens 360° camera with Vision Goggles and a motion controller. With a standard battery, the drone weighs 249 grams and falls into the C0 class in Europe. The camera records 360° video at up to 8K30.

The special thing about flying: The direction of view and the direction of flight are separate

That is one of the biggest differences for me compared to a regular drone. While the drone flies in one direction, with the Vision Goggles I can turn my head and look in a completely different direction. The direction of view is therefore not permanently linked to the direction of flight.

At first it sounds like a minor detail, but it significantly changes the flying experience. You feel much more like you’re actually in the air and can look around, rather than merely controlling a camera remotely.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a particularly ambitious drone pilot. That’s precisely why I find the system interesting: The fun comes not only from complex flight maneuvers, but also from the ability to actually explore the surroundings during flight.

Fly first, frame later: The image is created after the flight

With a classic Mavic or similar camera drone, the image must be aligned during flight. You orient the camera and drone to the subject and try to fly in exactly the desired position.

The Antigravity A1 works fundamentally differently. It captures the entire 360° sphere. It is only later decided which section will be exported as a normal 16:9 widescreen or square video.

This allows, for example, to create a forward view, a side view, a look back, or a top-down perspective from a single flight. This is especially convenient when you want to focus primarily on a clean route during flight and decide the actual camera control later.

The catch: Reframing costs visible image quality

One should not have any illusions here. 8K sounds impressive, but 8K is distributed over the entire 360° sphere. If only a normal portion of the image is later exported from this, there is effectively significantly less resolution left.

In addition, there is the fisheye lens. A classic camera drone with a normal lens concentrates its sensor resolution onto a much smaller field of view. Therefore, when I use a Mavic to aim a subject cleanly, I usually get a significantly sharper and more detailed 2D image.

The A1 is not won by maximum sharpness of a single image section, but by Freedom when capturing. I can place the drone next to or above a subject, capture the entire environment, and only later decide which camera shot to make of it.

Why this is still a very powerful tool

For certain productions, this flexibility is enormously valuable. A flight can provide several subsequent settings. Especially in locations, landscapes, architecture, or complex spatial situations, it is not necessary to plan every perspective perfectly individually.

With the increasing sensor resolution, this disadvantage should become smaller. However, the clear distinction remains at present:

• Classic camera drone: better sharpness and image quality for a specifically captured shot,
• 360° drone: Much more freedom when flying and the option to choose the perspective at a later stage.

Antigravity A1 for Gaussian Splatting

From XR's perspective, the A1 becomes even more interesting. For Gaussian Splatting You need many overlapping views of a scene from different camera positions. A 360° drone provides a lot of raw material for exactly that purpose.

Each recorded 360° frame contains the entire environment. In an external workflow, the equirectangular image can be broken down into multiple normal perspective views or Cubemap areas. From a single point in time, several virtual cameras with different viewing angles are created.

This does not automatically replace a cleanly planned photogrammetric flight. But it can significantly simplify data collection, because the camera does not have to be pointed at every detail during the flyby.

Why 360° drones are particularly logical for 3DGS

A normal drone image always looks in only one direction. If you want to reconstruct a complex scene completely, you must therefore plan several flight directions, altitudes, and camera angles very deliberately.

With a 360° drone, you get significantly more angles of view from every flight position. For Structure-from-Motion and Gaussian Splatting, this can improve coverage and reduce gaps. That is exactly why the Antigravity A1 is now also appearing in professional 360° to 3DGS workflows.

Insta360 and Splatica are now explicitly positioning 360° capture as an easy way to create photorealistic 3D scenes. Even independent workflows work with equirectangular frames, Cubemaps, or multiple virtual cameras per 360° frame.

But: A 360° drone does not replace a high-quality scanning drone

The strength of the A1 is coverage, not maximum resolution per viewing direction. For high-quality aerial photogrammetry, precise orthophotos, or controlled oblique-capture flights, classic drones with high-quality normal optics and – depending on the application – RTK remain the better choice.

For visually oriented Gaussian Splatting, A1 can be very exciting, especially when speed and complete spatial coverage are more important than metric accuracy.

For larger projects, we would therefore prefer to work in a hybrid way: classic drone images for high-resolution detail areas and structured flight patterns, 360° material for additional spatial coverage, and, if necessary, ground-based recordings or scanners for the areas below the drone.

Antigravity A1 versus DJI Avata 360

Meanwhile, the A1 is no longer alone. DJI has teamed up with DJI Avata 360 They have brought a direct competitor to the market. Both systems follow the same basic idea: full 360° recording, an immersive flight experience, and reframing after landing.

On paper, DJI is ahead in terms of pure camera specs. The A1, however, remains exceptionally lightweight and has a very distinctive character thanks to its combination of Vision Goggles, FreeMotion, and a class of 249 grams.

Since we do not currently own the Avata 360 ourselves, a direct personal test of its performance would be inappropriate. However, we can clearly say this about our A1: The concept works and is surprisingly a lot of fun.

For which applications do we see the A1?

• immersive 360° aerial shots,
• Reframing for social media and classic videos,
• Tourism, landscape and architecture,
• virtual tours and spatial documentation,
• Gaussian-Splatting capture as an additional or quick data source,
• Hybrid workflows from ground surveys and aerial data.

Our current conclusion

The Antigravity A1 is not a replacement for any classic camera drone. Those who need maximum sharpness in a fixed frame of view are better served by a normal, high-quality drone camera.

But the A1 solves another problem: it separates Flying and Framing. You can focus on the route and the space and choose the actual image section later. At the same time, a very immersive sense of flight is created because you can look around regardless of the direction of flight.

But for us, what can be created from the material beyond video is almost even more exciting. As a flying 360° capture platform, the A1 provides an enormous amount of spatial image information. For Gaussian Splatting, this is not a perfect tool, but it is a very interesting one – and a good example of how 360° video and 3D scanning are actually growing together.

More information about our combined workflows can be found at 3D Scans & Gaussian Splatting as well as in our contribution to Aerial Ground Map Fusion.

FAQ about the Antigravity A1