Fireworks of the Future

I missed this at the time, but there was a lovely presentation put together for the Hogmanay New Year’s Celebrations in Edinburgh, using a swarm of drones carrying lights.

A short summary video is here:

but it is really worth watching the full presentation, which you can find here, with music and narration.

You don’t want to think too much about the fact that the effect was really only visible from one location, or that they weren’t allowed actually to film the Edinburgh scenes over the city so they had to do it in a remote bit of the Highlands and overlay it on images of the Edinburgh skyline… It’s still a lovely combination of software, hardware and poetry.

P.S. It turns out that there have been quite a few of these type of displays in recent months, if you search YouTube for ‘drone light show’. But most of them aren’t narrated by David Tennant 🙂

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3 Comments

Yes, not before time either.

It seemed bizarre that we apparently celebrated New Year (and Brexit) with another dire warning from David Attenborough and then combusted huge amounts of ordinance over London.
Drone displays are much more friendly in every way. Also, they don’t upset people and dogs who are not watching.

Actually, I am very impressed with the way these drones can position themselves so accurately and not bang into one another.

Ah yes, as an owner of a nervous spaniel, I should have thought of the dog-friendliness too!

I had one of those “oh yes … duh!” moments a few years back flying back to the UK on Bonfire Night. Not only did I get to watch lots of fireworks displays all at the same time, I realised that of course the big exploding rockets actually make a sphere even though you only see a circle from where you’re standing.

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