Watch Kitty Hawk’s early test pilots learn to love the flying motorbike

The Kitty Hawk Flyer is a sort of a flying car except it’s not a car at all – it’s much more like a flying ATV, which is probably more legitimately all-terrain than most. Linguistics aside, it’s a very cool piece of tech that’s backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, and it’s already in the ‘working prototype’ phase of development.

Business Insider got a peek behind the curtain at what it’s like to source and train test pilots for the first Kitty Hawker Flyers that can actually fly, and Kitty Hawk provided a clip featuring interviews with some of its demonstration staff. These people were selected from a range of backgrounds for their very particular skill sets, which included not just piloting know-how, but also a general love for sports and aerial activities like paragliding.

Amazingly, though each pilot got a personalized training program to get them comfortable with the experience, the basic controls are very similar to gaming with an Xbox controller, according to the BI interview. In the video above, pilots describe a moment when it all comes together and they ‘get it’ with regards to controls, so to speak.

Kitty Hawk aims to actually ship Flyers sometime later this year, and based on the clear enthusiasm of these early testers, more than a few extreme sports enthusiasts will want to pony up for an early unit.