【Watch Project Power Online】

Disney World is Watch Project Power Onlineditching the fireworks for drones this holiday season.

On Nov. 20, Disney and Intel are launching the Starbright Holidays Drone Show, which they're billing as the world's largest drone LED show.

That's right, instead of carefully-orchestrated fireworks shooting hundreds of feet into the air to create images of a flag, flower or intersecting circles, 300 Intel drones will shine 4 billion different colors in the night sky.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The show, which will be held over a lake at Disney Springs (formerly Disney Downtown), is the culmination of months and months of technology development and experimentation by Intel and a new partnership with Disney that's done some eye-popping imagineeringof its own.

Known as The Shooting Star, the all foam and plastic fliers weighs about as much as a volleyball and can stay aloft for up to 20 minutes.

Intel has been testing these LED-equipped show drones since 2015, when it set a world record in Germany, flying and controlling 100 drones and even programming them to configure themselves into the Intel Logo.

Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

Intel took the show on the road, flying the drones all over Europe. That experience, Intel's SVP of New Technology Josh Walden told Mashable, taught Intel a lot about drone choreography. They were doing it wrong. Each of the shows took weeks and weeks to program and they needed a significant number of people on the ground to pilot the drones.

"We went back and designed the platform from the bottom up for light shows," said Walden.

The new platform lets the programming happen offsite and the pilot is able to upload the entire show to all the drones, which are sitting on interface platforms, at once.

Intel's algorithms not only program the drones, but quickly calculates exactly how many will be needed for each show. Starting the performance takes the push of one button.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The quadcopter drones have built-in GPS, which is so precise the programming now lets them fly just 1.5 meters apart (the original Shooting Star drones had to be at least 3 meters apart). The drones have no visual sensors to note if other drones are around them, Walden said.

Drones and people don't always mix, so Disney and Intel are keeping the drones roughly 200 yards away from the audience and don't plan to fly them over anyone's head. The drones are also geo-fenced so none can wander out of the safe zone. Pilots will be on the ground to take control if necessary.

Beyond the holiday-theme and full orchestra accompaniment, Intel couldn't give us any details on the contents of the show, which will run through Jan. 8. However, a teaser posted by Disney does show the drones configured into a towering Christmas tree.

---

Featured Video For You

---

Take a look at the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon

---

Topics Disney Intel

• Entertainment
• Social Good
• Games
• Digital Culture
• Shopping
• Tech
• Deals
• Life

• After the Storm
• Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Solange and more attend the Obamas' farewell party
• Woman discovers sneaky seal hiding in her back garden
• Tesla driver kills pedestrian with Getaround rental
• Camping Trip
• Man's NSFW 'complaint' about donuts escalates spectacularly on Twitter
• Why are these descriptions of cheese so horny?
• 'Fire Emblem: Three Houses' has everything 'Fire Emblem' fans want
• A March For the Marchers
• Inventor Franky Zapata fails to cross English Channel on his Flyboard

• Starbucks policy change: You don't need to buy anything to sit in cafe
• Chewbacca met the hobbits, but there was a problem: Photo
• Study claims Bitcoin could soon use as much energy as Austria
• IQbuds Boost review: pricey earbud, bargain hearing aid
• A predictive keyboard wrote a 'Game of Thrones' script and it's hilariously perfect
• Google removes 'Don't Be Evil' motto from its Code of Conduct
• Researchers: Pop music has been getting sadder over the last 30 years
• 7 movies that show how bonkers Prince Harry's royal lineage is
• Elon Musk's ultra
• The nostalgic power of Korean dramas — and why you should start binging right now

• The Never-ending Story
• How the FTC let Mark Zuckerberg off the hook
• 'Teletubbies' debunks viral tweet about Sun Baby having a baby
• Denzel Washington is all of us watching the Golden Globes
• A Letter to my Liberal Friends
• The killer whale from 'Blackfish' is dead
• Issa Rae called out Donald Trump on Golden Globes red carpet
• Here's a great reason not to get engaged under a waterfall
• Far Cry 5 Benchmarked: 50 GPUs Tested
• Terrified swimming elephant stays afloat in a fantastic Photoshop battle

• The New Witches of Salem
• How Zara's 'viral dress' invited unwanted attention into women's lives
• Uber gives cities a peek under the hood, sharing trip data with new tool
• IBM reveals new pride logo as a wave anti
• The Ministry of Politainment
• 15 extremely controversial thoughts about cheese
• Hate new Twitter? How to get back old Twitter.
• How boring your state is, based on its favorite ice cream flavor
• Right to Burn
• Jon Stewart celebrates passage of 9/11 compensation bill: 'The honor of my life'