Halo 4 hits London skies

The night sky over London on Monday night was dominated by a huge orange shape, possibly mistaken for a UFO until you realized it was dangling from a giant helicopter.

Halo 4 glyph over Tower Bridge in central London (source: Cinimod Studio)

Turns out is was a stunt by Microsoft to promote the release of Halo 4, a new game for the Xbox 360 console. The “glyph” is the symbol of the game’s evil Didact.

Not surprisingly, LEDs (more than 110,00) were used to create the lighting effects, although energy efficiency was undoubtedly low on the list of priorities for the Xbox marketing team.  

(Source: Cinimod Studio)

The lighting effects were created by Cinimod Studio who described the glyph as “one of the largest and brightest man-made structures to ever fly over a capital city. The symbol measures 50 feet in diameter, weighs over 3.2 tons and was illuminated by 20 kW of pure orange LED light.

This Wired article contains a video showing how the structure was put together.