Z by HP was about to launch the world’s most powerful desktop computer – the Z8 Fury. What used to take hours would take minutes and what would’ve taken minutes could happen in the blink of an eye. To properly unveil such an innovative product, we needed a launch moment as powerful as the machine itself.
In order to show off its new power, we challenged the Z8 Fury to a death-defying, rendering challenge – by throwing it out of a plane. In a complete free fall, the Z8 Fury would need to complete a render in order for the parachute to deploy and save itself.
Beyond a typical rendering speed test, we demonstrated with concrete evidence (literally), the superior power of the new Z8 Fury. In order to trigger the parachute and land safely, the Z8 Fury would have 30 seconds to render a visual of the rapidly approaching desert landscape – a task that would normally take five minutes to complete.
To create the stunt, the Z8 Fury – with the battery power it needed to render mid-air – was secured to a desk that was constructed to withstand the 14,000 ft. drop from the plane. The in-process render was monitored safely from the ground while a professional skydiving operator, who was also secured to the desk, kicked off the render of the simulated scene just as it was launched out of a cargo plane.
Spoiler alert – the computer lives. Rendering success triggered parachutes that floated the Z8 Fury workstation and its skydiving operator safely to the ground. The YouTube launch garnered over 1M organic views, and was heralded as among the ‘hardest’ tech product launches by a computer company.
