THE opening preview for this year's Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo has "gone down a storm and wowed audiences", organisers said.

More than 1,000 performers, 35 Zulu warriors, 40 fiddlers and 45 steel drummers entertained the preview crowd at this year's Homecoming-themed 65th tattoo on the floodlit esplanade of Edinburgh Castle.

Some 220,000 visitors are expected to attend the multi-national extravaganza.

The 2014 theme of Our Home, Friends and Family is designed to convey the notion of individual and collective journeys away from home to absorb experience and then return, organisers said.

The Tattoo opened with a specially-commissioned fanfare, composed by Michael McDermott.