Drone light shows turn night skies into a canvas. Why you don't want to miss them

There's a buzz in the air − literally − and it's turning the night sky into a blank canvas for a growing medium: art and animation produced by drones.

After roughly a decade of advances in what drones can do, swarm drone light shows are hitting their stride and gaining a foothold in more public spectacles that were once almost exclusively fireworks-centered: Super Bowl halftime shows, baseball games, conferences and, of course, Fourth of July celebrations.

What began as a novelty − the ability to send up multiple drones and synchronize them to make patterns − has evolved into more elaborate and larger-scale light shows. The demand for these shows has opened up new opportunities for companies that specialize in the lengthy planning and setup involved in sending up hundreds of drones at once.

Bernard Ozarowski, president of Alexandria, Virginia-based Pixis Drones, applied a video game analogy to the rapid advances in drone light show sophistication.

"To make an analogy to a different medium, we're just getting past the Atari days; maybe we're through the Intellivision, but it's not going to take us 50 years to get to a PlayStation 5. The technology is evolving very, very quickly and improving every couple of months."

Pixis Drones has staged numerous shows that span game launches, television premieres and sporting events, including Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles in 2022.

"It's about the emotional connection to the people on the ground," Ozarowski said. "We can do what fireworks can't. We can tell a story and make people feel something."

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How drone light shows work

In much the same way a marching band performs a football halftime show in which each musician must hit a precise mark on the field at a certain time in the music, each drone is preprogrammed to hit a finite coordinate in the air at a preset time.

These coordinates are stored as flight paths in simulation software on the pilot-in-charge's computer. This same software can simulate wind conditions other variables to ensure a smooth show. When setting up for a show, crews arrange the drones − or stacks of drones, depending on the size of the show − in an orderly grid. Each drone is numbered and corresponds to a node in the computer.

The specific kind of drone Pixis and Sky Elements use is a Uvify IFO swarm drone. It's small − 10.8 inches wide − and has a horizontal speed of nearly 33 feet per second. Each drone carries an array of three 24-bit RGB LED lights that can produce millions of colors.

Are drone light shows safe?

Drone show operators routinely file for waivers from the Federal Aviation Administration that allow them to fly drones at night and exceed the 400-foot ceiling usually enforced for drones in U.S. airspace.

Though not entirely without risk − these are 2-pound aircraft with propellers, after all − trained pilots running the shows have safety plans in place that include the flight area, a virtual boundary called a geofence and a safety team that includes visual observers and perimeter watchers. If a drone were to cross the geofence, generally set 150 to 200 feet around the flight area where there are no people, onboard commands either force the drone to return to the landing area or drop from the sky to reduce risk to people.

To illustrate how this looks, here is an example of the flight safety area for a show Pixis is staging in Gallup, New Mexico, for the city's Fourth of July "Stars & Stripes Celebration" at the Gallup Sports Complex, with safety zones represented as 400-foot-high boxes:

How big can drone shows be?

Drone light shows are limited only by the number of drones and the battery life. Though safe battery performance falls in the 10- to 15-minute mark, drone operators can send out multiple waves of drones to stagger the optimal flight times.

Tyler Kubicz, a production manager with Sky Elements, a national drone show company based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, says the shows have room to grow as the technology evolves.

"The artistry of drone shows is only expanding with all these improvements," Kubicz said. "Our team continues to push the production and artistic boundaries for drone shows."

Sky Elements has performed many high-profile drone light shows for Major League Baseball games, Fourth of July celebrations and, most recently, was featured on NBC's "America's Got Talent."

Kubicz says Sky Elements' company record for drones used in a single show is 1,592, set in November 2023 at an expo in Orlando, Florida.

As of May 1, the world record for the number of swarm drones flown simultaneously is 5,293, set by Uvify in South Korea.

Are drone light shows more pet-friendly than fireworks?

Though many drone light show runners coordinate with fireworks and pyrotechnics, they point out the advantages of drone-only light shows: a more approachable experience for military veterans stricken with PTSD, neurodivergent people and house pets that get easily stressed by fireworks explosions.

Drone shows "open up these types of communal experiences to people who otherwise would be excluded, and I think that's particularly relevant as we head into the Fourth of July holiday season," Ozarowski said. "We open up new possibilities for people who would otherwise not be able to enjoy these celebrations."

SOURCES Pixis Drones, Sky Elements, Uvify, Tech It Out with Marc Saltzman