- [Interviewer] Rides is, really, it's a combination
of obviously a bunch of development testing,
like all rides are,
but in this particular experience,
you have a lot of overlapping systems,
you have humans obviously being carried through the space,
and we can see here
that you have multiple ride vehicles all in place.
Dawson, I'd love to talk a little bit about
the use of FRV in testing rides.
So, not actually in practice even yet
just the testing phase.
- [Dawson] Sure, and actually I think the perfect
transition cause Rise of The Resistance was
actually one of the first attractions that
we've ever done with this pipeline
we're about to talk about that is incorporating
literal, physical free-roaming
vehicles as well as virtual reality to get
our designers into the process faster.
- And then previously I know that VR had
been used in like static configurations,
just a pre-vis rides and that sort of thing, right?
But not on a moving platform.
- So, when I actually started we used to
build, and we still do, these physical models.
You would sit on a stool.
And you would sort of like...
- [Interviewer] Right.
- Scoot your way through
to make sure you get a sense
of what the visuals are gonna look like.
One of my first jobs as an intern
was to take a camera through
actually the Ratatouille attraction
and understand what this was gonna look like
so they had a video to look at
and understand this process.
But then, what ended up happening is
at RND our job is,
it is often guided by
a little bit of what's coming out in technology,
what's emerging in robotics,
what's emerging in AI,
it comes out of a little bit of
what do we think is just neat.
And we ended up with this
free-ranging vehicle platform that we just
use for experimentation.
Now, it's not uncommon for us
to test a lot of these systems,
in fact I think we have a picture of what
a normal sort of test vehicle looks like,
you can see a team,
its got all of the stuff on there,
its built out of plywood,
its very built...
Yeah, thank you.
Its built to...
Get really close to what we think
this specific ride is gonna look like.
- [Interviewer] So this may be a ride specific platform.
- [Dawson] Yeah, and they start like this,
and we do this all the time.
Mockups are part of the fun of imagineering.
So at RND we started taking one of these platforms
and just adding things to it.
So this ones got a motion base,
we've got a Apple box holding up that computer monitor,
we've got-
- [Interviewer] It's an official Apple box,
official Disney Apple box.
(laughing)
- [Dawson] It's not sponsored.
- [Interviewer] Right.
- [Dawson] But when we started playing with this,
what we were looking at is,
what's interesting in this base of free-ranging vehicles?
This is everything from the mechanical system,
to the onboard control system,
to the wayside control system,
to sensor systems,
to what does this thing even do?
How does it drive?
And one thing we were just,
honestly just playing with,
there's a person I work with everyday
named Michael Ardy who was,
playing with virtual reality,
he had got it working on the vehicle,
he had actually linked it up to a game engine,
and this was three or four years ago.
And there was this other team
working on this StarWars ride,
and they're like,
well we have...
Everything and a game engine all ready to pre visualize it.
We can ride through it because like you said,
we wanna sit at our desk
and understand the sight lines.
And he said, well what if...
I just take your animation,
and they put the VR right on board,
and we'll just run it like that.
We'll run both of these things concurrently,
and get the motion one to one.
Cause I think there is sort of,
we use and love simulators,
but there's just something about
one to one exactly the motions, the you know.
The human body is one of the greatest sensors every created.
And when you're talking about rides,
you can think about them as
sort of just in it for the thrill.
But when Joe's saying you're kind of designing characters,
you want this thing to feel good at...
Every moment.
This has to feel not just like you're going forward,
and it can't just feel comfortable,
it can't just feel safe,
it also has to feel like that character is
driving me forward.
And the only way to really confirm that,
is to put it all together.
And so what we've ended up with now,
this is a look at our current system,
we have two vehicles.
We have one eight person vehicle,
one five person vehicle
still has the motion base on board,
and we use these things constantly to just
experiment with the greatest metric I think on Earth,
which is what's fun.
Because there's no simulation that can tell you
in a single plane,
from a bird's eye view I can tell this is fun,
or from a concept painting I can tell this is fun-
You need those things to-
- [Interviewer] Everyone knows isometric fun
is the most fun.
- It's my personal favorite.
But I do think that there's just...
We do, you know, we have this thing of like-
there's just people that just know that was it.
That was the corner that felt right.
And by putting it all on board we have,
in that case you can have 13 people at once
experiencing sort of a moment from an attraction.
You're closing the loop.
And I think that its not just for imagineering,
as I'm sure anyone here who has built anything, ever,
the time when you really understand it is when
things start to come together.
Its when that one system has to talk to that other system,
has to talk to the person on board,
understanding the show or the story of the experience.
And so for us,
what this has allowed us to do is we have a
custom vehicle system talking to VR,
talking to a game engine,
that just lets us understand
and come together really quickly.
- [Interviewer] And I think we have a video of that
vehicle in action, so we can play that.
And so, how long did it take to develop this platform,
roughly?
- I think that's...
That's a tough question, cause in truth,
this is us actually-
this is literally footage,
again I don't know the year off hand,
a pre motion base
actually doing Rise of the Resistance testing,
this is me and Michael on board there,
playing with the motion base.
This is it with our,
delightful show lighting because we cannot be helped-
- [Interviewer] Well of course.
- [Dawson[ In the entertainment Industry.
Purple lighting makes everything look really good.
- [Interviewer] Right, maybe add some orange
when you get the Michael Bay.
- But when it comes to linked I think really,
everything that we do at RND is really more about
iteration, as opposed to length.
Because what happened was,
we had this system that was,
lets explore this aspect of a free ranging vehicle.
We have this system that was,
well I have this mechanical test I wanna do,
we have this one guy that's like,
well I kind of wanna play with VR,
and then suddenly we create something of value,
and now I don't know how many but...
Tons of rides are using that system
in order to understand exactly
what their things gonna feel like in the future,
I mean, as far out as we've had rides that have come in,
two weeks into ideation.
All they've got is the most basic 3D model
someone put together on a laptop.
In a matter of hours,
you can be riding it.
You can actually see what it feels like and looks like,
and you get the wind in your face cause
its just actual air moving around you.
We don't have to simulate that.
- [Interviewer] Okay cool.