Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run was a milestone moment for Walt Disney Imagineering when it was opened in 2019. It was the first Disney ride with which guests could directly control their experience and communicate with the story. But for the next smugglers Run Mission, the company goes one step further and makes the ride feel much more like a traditional video game, complete with branching choices and refined enemies.
WDI worked closely with Visual Effects Studio Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) in the first smugglers who ran mission, with the latter used the Unreal Engine 4 of Epic Games to make the high-fidelity-graphics so that you are part of a exciting intergalactic. Disney’s relationship with Epic actually goes back several years, when Lucasfilm decided to use Unreal Engine to build the virtual sets Mandalorian TV program.
To prepare for the new upgrades of the ride, ILM has switched from UE4 to Unreal Engine 5.
“For the first mission we worked with an external game developer who helped us to make the GamePlay code, and then we had industrial light and magic producing all Game capacity and then works to integrate those things together,” said Asa Kalama, Vice -President and performing director at Walt Disney Imagetering.
“Now for the second mission, we do all this with our Lucasfilm partners. So industrial light and magic produces the game activa. ILM HIGHERSIVE [formerly known as ILMxLAB] Does the gameplay programming. Our friends at Skywalker Sound are responsible for all audio programming and all production of Audiomedia. So it’s really great because they are all literally in one building, and from an integration position, it makes it compile everything much faster. “
Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run in Disneyland and Walt Disney World brings you control over the iconic Corellian Starship from the Star Wars films. There are three roles to choose from (each suitable for a maximum of two people) in the cockpit: pilots, gunners and engineers. Pilots maneuver the ship and are responsible for jumping to Hyperspace, Gunners attack enemy stropers and engineers help repair the ship and fire harpoons to steal freight.
You earn galactic credits (which serves as the high score of your team) for completing your objective and can increase that amount, depending on how well you do as a team. Your performance will vary every time you are on ride, but otherwise the story in the original mission is strictly linear. The second mission, which previously announced Disney would play the Mandalorian and his cute strength-waving son Grogu, will offer much more usuality.
In this new experience you will be sent to the Desert Planet or Tatooine to conquer a group of former imperial officers and pirates because this is a premium yacht mission, Mando and his child will help your crew detect them. At a certain point during the chase, your engineers will have to make A critical decision About which premium you should pursue: you visit the Cloud City in Spin, The Wreckage of Death Star II near Endor, or the vast metropolis of Coruscant.
“So every time you drive two on mission, you get the chance to have a completely different branching experience,” said Kalama. “And then in each of the environments themselves we worked with our ILM partners to develop levels that are considerably more branching [paths] So even if you return to the same destination, there is a new route or new secrets to discover. “
He also said that the development teams “come up in intelligence” of tie -hunters in this new mission in terms of how they can be and where and how often they react.
These ambitious new functions are possible now that ILM works with UE5. The team is also upgrading the computers They are attached to each of the Millennium Falcon cockpits with the latest generation of CPUs and graphic cards (each computer contains eight GPUs).
“We are enthusiastic about the extra headroom that we have, because there were many functions or stretch goals in terms of visual loyalty that we eventually had to return to make that assessment of the performance,” said Kalama. “But we are also very enthusiastic about much more dynamic destruction, and that is something that we really felt that we were a bit more limited in the previous version of the engine.”
Visitors to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge will have to wait until 22 May 2026 to try the new smugglers Run experience, which coincides with the release of The Mandalorian and Grogu Film in theaters.
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