The first official virtual reality experience based on the Star Wars franchise launches today, but there’s plenty more to come from the beloved sci-fi series.
This weekend’s Star Wars Celebration event in London, UK played host to a new panel from the Industrial Light and Magic Experience Lab (ILMxLAB), a division of the celebrated special effects company that focuses on new technologies such as VR and mixed reality. Along with announcing that Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine would be hitting the HTC Vive today, the panel also confirmed that it was working on a new VR experience; a new narrative-based piece that stars none other than iconic Star Wars villain, Darth Vader.
Writing the piece is David S. Goyer, who joined members of ILMxLAB at the panel. He’s known for his work on DC comic book adaptions like Batman Begins and Man of Steel. Interestingly, the piece will be a canonical entry into the Star Wars saga, and will be an entirely original story. Goyer teased that the audience might “have some effect” on the story themselves, as they’re able to pick up and push objects, walk around the environment and even touch characters.
No date for the piece was given though Goyer did tease that people might try it in “a year or two” from now. It also wasn’t clear what headsets it was in development for though, based on his description of the piece, it sounds like it could be another HTC Vive title, perhaps also arriving on the Oculus Rift with Oculus Touch support. Then again, if it’s a few years away then it’s anyone’s guess as to what other headsets could be announced by then.
From the sounds of it, you can expect this to be a fully CG experience and now a live action video. Can we expect Vader’s appearance to resemble his design in the Star Wars Rebels CG cartoon?
For now, we’ll settle for Trials of Tatooine, which lets you wield a lightsaber, fight Stormtroopers and even meet R2-D2. It’s the first step in realising for full Star Wars VR experience and you should definitely look out for its release on Steam later on today.
