The galaxy from far, far away is getting a little bit closer this holiday season by way of Samsung right alongside the release of the latest Star Wars film, Rise of Skywalker.
This week an augmented reality (AR) experience called Invasion with Galaxy developed by R/GA (in collaboration with Pl.ai, Disney, ILM, Edelman, Starcom, VerifiedWorks, Publicis Sapient, Merkle, and HelloWorld) rolled out to many Samsung Galaxy smartphones around major cities such as Los Angelse, New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, and more. The AR experience is exclusive to the ‘Members’ app on Galaxy smartphones. It’ll roll out nationally across all US states and Puerto Rico starting on December 23 until January 2.
If the app is updated on your phone and you’re in a compatible area, you just scan the environment for a few seconds then point your device up at the sky. Depending on which day it is, one of the iconic ships from Star Wars will appear.
As you can see in the footage below, the ships are very high-quality models and will zoom through the air, complete with sound effects, as if they’re really there in the city. It’s sort of like a more involved version of the Playground stickers introduced on the Google Pixel camera app. Most of those are relatively stationary with a bit of movement but they don’t actually move through your environment like a ship flying through the air does.
“We wanted to celebrate our Galaxy owners this holiday season and bring them an experience that capitalizes on this cultural moment by taking their favorite starships from the film and bringing them to skies, where they belong,” Rodrigo Burdman, R/GA creative director, said in a prepared statement.
If you get the chance to try it out let us know what you think down in the comments below!
