In a Galaxy Far, Far Away, the Solution is BOXX

Disney taps BOXX, NVIDIA and Epic Games for new Star Wars theme park attraction

The premiere of the latest Star Wars film entry (Solo: A Star Wars Story opened May 25) is always big news, but motion pictures are only one aspect of the franchise’s growing universe. Next year, Disney theme parks will debut the largest single-themed expansion in their storied history when Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opens at Disneyland Resort and the Walt Disney World Resort. Set on the planet of Batuu in “a galaxy far, far away,” one of the key attractions of the new theme expansion will be an epic Stormtrooper battle, while the other (powered by BOXX) features an opportunity for guests to pilot Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon, an incredibly detailed and immersive experience.

Walt Disney Imagineering teamed with NVIDIA and Epic Games to develop new technology to drive the attraction and when it launches, riders will command a cockpit powered with a single BOXX system featuring eight NVIDIA Quadro P6000 GPUs, connected via Quadro SLI. Quadro Sync synchronizes five projectors for the creation of spectacular ultra-high resolution and perfectly timed displays which fully immerse riders in Batuu.

Working with NVIDIA and Epic Games, the Imagineering team created a custom multi-GPU implementation for Unreal Engine. This new code was returned to the Epic Games team and will help influence how multi-GPUs function for their engine.

“We worked with NVIDIA engineers to use Quadro-specific features like Mosaic and cross-GPU reads to develop a renderer that had performance characteristics we needed,” says Bei Yang, technology studio executive at Disney Imagineering. “Using the eight connected GPUs allowed us to achieve performance unlike anything before.” Disney Imagineering took advantage of the latest NVIDIA technology and the technical modifications they made for the Unreal Engine, enabling the BOXX system to render with unparalleled quality and speed.