Massive-scale entertainment is no simple challenge. The public demands ever more advanced and complete experiences, things that can be felt and touched on multiple levels. If there is one company that understands this perfectly it is Disney, but the pressure keeps growing, and its competitors have decided to fight on ground historically controlled by Mickey and his gang: the parks. The next generation of attractions is being cooked up in the research and development labs of Disney Research, which we can now see up close thanks to this video published by The Wall Street Journal…
Lately, the news surrounding Disney focuses on political/ideological controversies, the performance of its streaming service, its value as a company, hypothetical buyers, or how bad the current series is. However, some of the most interesting things in Disney are completely ignored, and from a certain point of view, that is the plan.
For example, Disney World is a city within a giant swamp (literally "the state of Florida"), and that turned the company into one of the best mosquito hunters on the planet. But there is also Disney Research, a research and development network that usually operates quite discreetly. In one of the latest videos published by The Wall Street Journal, Disney Research opened the doors of its facilities in Los Angeles… and showed wonderful things:
Disney Research, as never before
In much of the video we can appreciate the work of Lanny Smoot, one of the most important and decorated inventors in the company. Smoot created (among other things) the traction system for BB-8, and the closest thing we have seen to a real lightsaber, used by actors in the (now retired) Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. The tour begins with an electromagnetic eye, whose goal is to replace many of the mechanisms that would otherwise be installed in the heads of animatronics.
However, we don't take long to get to the lightsaber, the "Hero Lightsaber". The key to its design is to make the "blade" retractable, but at the same time keep the same diameter along its entire length, otherwise it would have an unwanted "antenna effect". This kind of attention to detail is vital not only to meet visitor expectations… but also to convince them to come back.
The best part of the video is saved for last, and that is the Holotile. The concept of an omnidirectional treadmill is not new, but the truth is they never gained popularity due to their natural limitations. Holotile breaks with all that by adopting a modular system, and offering support for more than one person at a time. The surface is based on a series of LIDAR-assisted discs that rotate and change their angle to "undo" or "cancel" the user's steps. Equally impressive is the possibility of moving objects in any direction, something Disney already imagines for "simulating the Force" in future Star Wars attractions. The Holotile has been in development for over seven years, and Smoot shared a fascinating tidbit: He was inspired by the holodeck from Star Trek.
