I can feel it now – the lightsaber battles, the epic battles, exploring the magical worlds of the universe, the many infinite possibilities.
Star Wars is a universe that is simply ripe to be explored in virtual reality. So ripe in fact it has been the subject of a number of different VR demos already, from Sixense’s famous lightsaber demo, to the Battle of Endor, to an exploration of the Millennium Falcon we have seen many takes on the magical universe of Dark and Light sides.
Well today we got a tease for an upcoming VR experience on the HTC Vive that will look to tie in with the upcoming Star Wars movie – The Force Awakens.
The experiences will be created by a new division of Industrial Light and Magic (the VFX studio behind all the Star Wars films) called ILMxLab. The video shows off a number of different potential visions for what their virtual reality projects might be – including many experiments with “VR Caves” that could turn into broader installations.
But perhaps most exciting was the inclusion of the HTC Vive in the promotional video – suggesting that we may get a fully immersive room scale experience on the Vive. Judging by the videos, it would appear to also have some degree of interactivity, as evidenced by the soft controller movements shown in the video. The motions – while brief don’t seem to suggest any kind of lightsaber like pose but rather reaching out to bat at or pet something about R2D2 height (the famous droid was also present in a number of the Cave scenarios shown in the video).
Movie tie ins and VR are beginning to become commonplace. From Insurgent to Jurassic Park to even a number of future films like Ghost in the Shell and Ready Player One – it seems like VR will remain a mainstay in the film marketing world, at least for the time being.
HTC and Valve must have their fingers twinkling a la Mr. Burns after this news. The new Star Wars film is slated for a Holiday season release – and marketing material would likely be released a little sooner… sooner being right around the same time the the Vive is set for consumer release…
