[edave]

I work with the exact same setup. You're looking at 100-250k for the "Vicon" (motion capture) setup and 4k+ for the quad rotor (an Ascending Technologies Hummingbird).

That sounds like a lot, but the motion capture system can accurately track things with sub-millimeter precision at, at least, 100fps. The Hummingbird is very sophisticated, with a 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis magnometer, 3-axis gyro and high performance brushless motors, and of course, the R&D cost for developing all of it.

DIYDrones has a lot of good info on hacking these together, but you won't get the performance you're seeing in that movie.

I've talked to people who are trying to build a poor man's version of these and they're aiming for 600-800, but it's not going to be as high performance.