Disney Patent Could Bring Floating Projection Screens to Parks

Reading Time: 6 minutes

The leftover smoke after fireworks could become a second show. Disney Enterprises has filed a patent describing a system that projects images and animations onto smoke, fog, and fireworks residue — adjusting the content in real time as those materials drift and change shape.

It’s a genuinely clever solution to a problem that has broken Disney shows before.

Quick Summary

• The patent is “Opportunistic Projection Onto Dynamic Light Reflective Material”
• Published August 20, 2026, filed February 20, 2025
• Cameras detect the size, shape, and density of drifting smoke
• Projected content reshapes itself to match in real time
• Generative AI can create or modify content on the fly
• Lead inventor is Lanny Smoot, a National Inventors Hall of Fame member
• Filing a patent does not mean Disney will build it

Who Filed It

The application published August 20, 2026, with a filing date of February 20, 2025.

The inventors are Lanny S. Smoot, Jack Wetherell, Samantha Cheuklum Ho, and Richard Erik Sotomayor.

How the System Works

Most projection systems rely on a fixed surface — a building, a screen — with a known size and shape.

This patent covers something different: projecting onto material that moves and changes shape on its own.

The system uses a camera to capture images of “light reflective material” in an area. That material could be:

• Fireworks residue left behind after a launch
• Smoke or fog from a machine
• Low-lying clouds, mist, or airborne debris
• Particles suspended in water or another clear liquid
• A flag, banner, or other flexible fabric

A light source — which can emit non-visible infrared light — illuminates the area. The camera detects how that light reflects off the material, revealing its size, shape, density, and position.

A controller uses that data to build content that fits the space, and a projector puts the image onto the material.

The Infrared Detail Is the Clever Part

Easy to skim past, and it’s what makes the whole thing viable.

You cannot use visible light to scan a projection surface while also projecting onto it — the scanning light would wash out the image and be visible to the audience.

Infrared solves that completely. The camera sees the smoke’s shape in a wavelength the audience can’t perceive, while the projector works in visible light. The two systems operate in the same physical space without interfering with each other.

Content That Adapts as It Moves

The patent describes projection changing along with the material.

As smoke drifts or fireworks residue thins out, the system tracks the new shape and reforms the image to match.

The filing gives a striking example: a character enclosed in a projected sphere — a smoke-filled balloon. When the sphere bursts and the smoke spreads into an irregular cloud, the system detects the new shape and stretches the character to fit inside it, with an arm or other body part sometimes landing in a separate piece of the cloud.

Other described scenarios:

• A cloud splitting into multiple parts, with the projected character splitting to match
• Two separate clouds drifting together and combining, with the two projected images merging into one

The patent notes the controller can use generative AI to create or modify content on the fly based on the detected shape.

Why the Splitting Character Is the Idea Worth Noticing

Most projection technology tries to hide the surface. This does the opposite.

The conventional approach treats an irregular surface as a problem to be corrected — warping the image so it looks flat and correct despite the geometry underneath.

This patent treats the irregularity as the effect itself. A character whose arm ends up in a detached wisp of smoke isn’t a rendering error. It’s a ghost, a spirit, a magical being that behaves like vapour because it is vapour.

That’s a legitimately different creative idea, and it’s the sort of thing that only becomes possible once the tracking is fast enough to keep up.

Disney’s History With Moving Surfaces

Projecting onto something that isn’t flat or fixed isn’t new territory here.

IllumiNations at EPCOT used lasers to draw basic shapes onto water screens — a simple version of the idea.

Fantasmic! took it further, projecting full video onto water curtains, which needed a steady, controlled water flow to hold a usable shape.

Rivers of Light at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, now closed, also relied on large water curtains. That show frequently ran into trouble when wind picked up, since even a light breeze could break up the curtain and throw off the image.

This Patent Is Aimed Directly at That Failure

Rivers of Light’s wind problem was one of its defining weaknesses, and anyone who saw the show on a breezy evening watched projections dissolve into unreadable shapes on a collapsing water screen.

The patented approach inverts the requirement. Instead of needing a stable, wind-resistant surface, the system detects whatever shape the surface currently has — however irregular — and reshapes the content to fit in real time.

In theory, wind stops being a failure condition and becomes an input. Smoke drifting off doesn’t ruin the effect; the system tracks it and adjusts.

In practice, there’s a hard limit nobody should ignore. Tracking a shape and reprojecting onto it requires the material to still be there. A strong enough gust disperses smoke entirely, and no amount of real-time adaptation projects onto nothing.

Where This Could Show Up

Fireworks is the direct use case the filing points to. After a nighttime show, the smoke left hanging in the air becomes a canvas for a follow-up projection — effectively a second show immediately after the first.

That’s the most commercially obvious application, and it’s a good one. Post-fireworks smoke is currently a nuisance that obscures the finale and lingers over the park. Turning it into content is the kind of inversion Imagineering does well.

The application also describes floating or suspended surfaces, including:

• Tethered balloons
• “Floats” — screens suspended from a vehicle

Multiple floats could line up to form what the patent calls an “air train,” each showing part of a coordinated image as it moves through the air.

Other examples include reacting to a guest’s actions — a wand wave or hand gesture — and adjusting the image based on a guest’s viewing angle.

The Necessary Caveat

Filing a patent application does not mean Disney will build this.

Patents are extremely common for Imagineering, and many never make it past the concept stage. Disney files defensively, speculatively, and exploratively.

Treat this as an indication of what Imagineering is thinking about, not as an announcement.

That said, the fireworks-residue application is unusually practical for a Disney patent — it uses a byproduct the parks already produce nightly, requires no new physical infrastructure in guest areas, and solves a problem that already exists.

About Lanny Smoot

The lead inventor is worth knowing about.

Lanny Smoot is a Disney Research Fellow and one of Walt Disney Imagineering’s most prolific inventors, holding more than 100 patents over his career.

Born in 1955 in Brooklyn, New York, Smoot developed an interest in science and engineering as a child with support from his parents.

In January 2024, Smoot became the first Imagineer inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He is only the second person from The Walt Disney Company to receive the honor — following Walt Disney himself, inducted posthumously for the multiplane camera.

One of his more recent projects is the HoloTile Floor, an omnidirectional floor surface from Disney Research Labs that lets multiple people walk in any direction while staying within a set space.

His involvement raises the odds this goes somewhere. A hundred patents and a Hall of Fame induction is a track record of ideas that get built, not just filed.

The Bottom Line

Disney has patented a system that projects images onto smoke, fog, and fireworks residue, using infrared cameras to detect the material’s shape and reshape the content in real time as it drifts, splits, or merges.

It directly addresses the wind problem that plagued Rivers of Light, and the most practical application is turning post-fireworks smoke into a second show.

Lanny Smoot leads the filing. As always, a patent is not a plan.

---

---

Looking To Book Your Dream Disney Vacation?