Remember that training exercise that Obi-wan had Luke go through on the Millennium Falcon, just after they booked passage off Tatooine? He put on a helmet that blocked his vision and then had to block beams shot at him by a small floating droid.
Well, this augmented reality Jedi Challenge is nothing like that at all. Yes, you hold a lightsaber hilt and wear a helmet, but the idea is not to cut off your sight, but show you something amazing instead.
But, just what is Augmented Reality? AR, as it is known, uses special display technology to overlay digital graphics over the real world. For example, if you’re wearing an AR headset, you might see monsters roaming around or see objects like movie posters come to life.
Included in this package is the Lenovo Mirage AR headset, a tracking beacon, and a pretty rad-looking lightsaber hilt. You also need to download the Jedi Challenge app (here for iOS) to your phone and then insert it into the headset.
Special glass and mirrors are used to project the image on the phone screen in such a way that it blends with the real-world scene around you. You should know that this system will only work with a limited number of phone models, so if you’re buying it for someone (or yourself) you need to double check to see if that phone is on the list.
The app includes several very cool games. The one that most people are going to care about is lightsaber battles. Finally you can experience what it’s like to fight Darth Vader one-on-one. Or, at least, what it was like for Luke to fight the illusion of Darth in that cave on Dagobah. If you know someone with the same kit (or buy 2) you can have player-vs-player saber battles too. It’s like we grew up and our childhood fantasies became real!
If you get tired of lightsaber fights (yeah, right) you can also take part in epic space battles and play that holographic board game from the Millennium Falcon and a ground strategy game akin to what we saw in Rogue One. This is a unique experience made possible by the latest technologies. If you have a compatible phone, we can think of few things we’d like to try more.
