Everyone remembers the first time R2-D2 suddenly projected Princess Leia’s desperate plea for help in Luke Skywalker’s home on Tatooine. It was one of the first of many iconic ideas we’d see in the first Star Wars movie. Now, some 40 years on, you can record one of those messages for yourself.
Holo Messenger is a new ARKit app from Abhishek Singh, who you may remember for creating the first level of Super Mario Bros in AR using Microsoft’s HoloLens. For his new project, Singh is has created a holographic messenger service that’s themed around both Star Wars and Star Trek.
The idea is incredibly simple; record yourself making a message with your iPhone, and then send it to others. They’ll be able to view the message projected from R2-D2 himself, just as seen in A New Hope all those years ago. You can also watch it transmitted by BB-8 from the most recent movies, and your message can ‘beam in’ as if it were being teleported in straight from a Starfleet vessel from Star Trek.
Check it out in the video below. It looks like yet another awesome use of ARKit.
If you’re interested in trying the app out for yourself then you can shoot your email over to Singh here.
If you’re looking for a more official Star Wars AR experience then you might want to check out Jedi Challenges, a new lightsaber game with its very own AR headset from Lenovo.
