AV Magazine: Skyworx Drone Shows delivered one of the most operationally efficient large-scale drone light show deployments ever executed in the US, at the close of CES 2026.
A six-person team executed four performances in the Las Vegas night sky – each featuring 1,200 illuminated Damoda drones – during a three-hour window.
3 comments:
Drone shows have always been something that fascinates me with the complex 3D shapes that the designers of said shows are able to make. As drone technology continues to advance that inevitably lead to these shows becoming even more complex, and beautiful. The only other type of light show that I can compare a drone show to is a fireworks display, and the big difference between these two types of displays is that one involves explosions and the other only uses electricity for power. When you think about the two of them in this way you can see the obvious environmental benefits to doing more drone shows vs firework show. Regardless I hope both stick around. I just think that in the future we will begin to see more drone shows then ever before due to technology. I have love seeing fireworks since I was a kid, and I hope to continue seeing fireworks. It would be incredible to work on a production that uses fireworks in some way, and I can say the same thing for drone shows. The work that both of these can do for an outer theatrical or live production can be awe inspiring, and working with them in some capacity would be an incredible experience.
I have a give-and-take feeling about using drones for light shows. In the end I think it is more environmentally friendly and sustainable than doing fireworks, Yet my younger self is always sad to not see real fireworks because it's such a big and important memory in my childhood that was very special to me, But in the end I'm very happy to see that we are thinking about being more environmentally friendly when it comes to any form of entertainment. But then again, it also goes into question with using this amount of energy. To produce these shows on a large scale, what is the balance betweenUsing chemicals and other stuff for fireworks and then using energy and resources for these drone shows that are on these massive scales? When not thinking about the environmental consequences, I do think that this is a beautiful art piece that I'm sure looks absolutely incredible when looking at the night sky when looking from below.
This marks an interesting transition of the start of drone shows reaching maturity. When John Huntingon came to speak to us about the industry, one of the things that stood out to him was that much of the equipment that we use in the larger entertainment industry has basically reached maturity, and that equipment and control systems have basically become a commodity that we can reliably purchase to design a system, without having to do a lot of work to engineer a system or figure out something new. It sounds like drone shows are on that same trajectory, and I think that it will probably mean to us seeing more and more of them as time goes on.
I honestly don’t know what drone swarm control systems look like right now, but I wonder how similar they are to what we typically think of as entertainment control systems. I think the closest approximation would be a media server, but there are also some elements of an automation platform that need to be worked in. I think it will be very interesting to see how the rest of the entertainment industry disciplines try to interact with drone swarms, to create multi-media effects. I could definitely see a show where the drone control server was also sending out data to sky trackers, speaker systems, pyro, and fountains to get the full multi-sensory experience that it seems like the entertainment industry is always thriving for.
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