Motion Lab

Murmur / 600 aircraft / Night ops

It exists for eleven minutes and then it lands.

A drone show cannot be photographed. A long exposure turns six hundred aircraft into six hundred streaks; a short one loses the shape entirely. So this page does not show you a photograph. Scroll, and it flies.

Check a dateConcept work — fictional brand, built to demonstrate technique. Nothing is for sale.

The fleet

600
Aircraft
11 min
Show length
20 cm
Position tolerance
180 m
Ceiling

You cannot rehearse a sky. You can simulate every frame, fly the whole show twice at fifty metres over an empty field, and still meet the wind for the first time on the night. Everything expensive about this trade is the cost of being sure before the first aircraft leaves the ground.

Drone light shows

Six hundred aircraft, three formations

Each aircraft is one addressable light holding a coordinate to within twenty centimetres. Scroll to fly the show: the fleet leaves the sphere, opens into the wave, and closes on the ring. Nothing here is a video — the positions are computed per aircraft, per frame, on your own machine.

  1. 01

    Launch. Six hundred aircraft lift in eight waves of seventy-five and hold a sphere at a hundred and twenty metres.

  2. 02

    The sphere opens. Every aircraft is flying its own path and no two arrive together — that stagger is what makes a fleet read as a swarm rather than a rigid object.

  3. 03

    The ring closes at a hundred and eighty metres. Eleven minutes after launch the whole fleet is on the ground and the field is dark again.

What it needs on the ground

A show is a cylinder of airspace and a fenced box under it. The numbers below are the ones a landowner and a council actually ask for, and they are the first thing we send.

CONTAINMENT · 240 mFLIGHT VOLUME · 160 mCROWD LINE · 90 mLAUNCH GRID · 40 mN100 m180 m220 mELEVATION · LOOKING NORTH
Launch grid40 m
Six hundred pads at 1.4 m centres. Fenced, matted, and lit red until the last aircraft is armed.
Crowd line90 m
The closest the public may stand. Set by the fleet size, not by the view.
Flight volume160 m · 180 m up
Where the aircraft are allowed to be. Nothing leaves this cylinder, including in a failure.
Containment240 m · 220 m up
The buffer a total loss of control has to land inside. This is the number that decides whether a site is possible at all.

The stack

Timecode runs the show, not a person. An operator watches four numbers and holds one button; the only decision available after launch is to stop.

  1. -00:20:00

    Arm

    Six hundred pre-flight checks in ninety seconds. Any aircraft that fails is left on the pad and the show recalculates around the hole.

  2. 18 min
    -00:02:00

    Hold

    Last wind reading. Above the limit this is where it stops, and it has stopped here four times.

  3. 00:00:00

    Launch

    Eight waves of seventy-five, eleven seconds apart. The field goes from dark to a hundred and twenty metres of light in ninety seconds.

  4. 00:03:40

    Sphere

    First hold. Every aircraft inside twenty centimetres of its assigned point or the frame is flagged.

  5. 00:06:15

    Wave

    The long transition, and the one the audience remembers. Two hundred and forty aircraft are moving at any instant.

  6. 00:09:30

    Ring

    Final formation, one hundred and eighty metres. Held for forty seconds because a shape needs time to be read.

  7. 00:11:00

    Recover

    Lights out, then land in reverse wave order onto the same pad each aircraft left.

What stops a show

These are not preferences. Any one of them over the line and the show does not fly, which is written into the contract before a date is held — so that the conversation happens in March rather than on the night.

  • Mean wind

    5.2 m/s

    Within · max 8 m/s

    At launch height, not at head height. The difference is usually two metres a second and always the wrong way.

  • Gust

    9.4 m/s

    Within · max 11 m/s

    A single gust over the limit inside the last ten minutes holds the launch.

  • Visibility

    8 km

    Within · min 3 km

    The pilot in command has to see the fleet. Below this the show is flown into cloud and nobody sees anything.

  • Rain

    0 mm/h

    Within · max 0.2 mm/h

    The aircraft are rated for light rain. The crowd is not, and neither is a two-hour pack-down.

What a show costs, and why the second one is cheaper

Almost all of it is design, simulation and the licence application — work that happens months before anybody sees a light. Fly the same show twice and the second night is aircraft, crew and insurance only.

  1. Civic, 5 minutes

    150 aircraft · 6 weeks

    £24,000

  2. Civic, 11 minutes

    300 aircraft · 9 weeks

    £52,000

  3. Flagship, 11 minutes

    600 aircraft · 14 weeks

    £96,000

  4. Second night, same show

    as flown aircraft · none

    £31,000

  5. Tour, four nights

    300 aircraft · 9 weeks

    £148,000
£025k50k75k100k125k150k

Before a date is held

Tell us the field and the date and we will tell you if it is legal

Most enquiries fail on containment, not on money: a two hundred and forty metre buffer is a bigger field than people picture, and it has to be a field you control. We can rule a site in or out from a postcode in about a day.

Send a postcodeConcept work — fictional brand, built to demonstrate technique. Nothing is for sale.