Lenovo And Disney Join Forces To Unveil Star Wars: Jedi Challenges AR Experience

Every Star Wars fan has dreamed of becoming a Jedi, and every so often we are afforded the opportunity to live out those fantasies in a video game. Advances in technology help make these experiences increasingly realistic, such as using motion controls on the Wii in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Star Wars: The Clone Wars—Lightsaber Duels. Disney and Lenovo are going to take things a step further. The two companies have teamed up to deliver an augmented reality experience that will have you wielding a lightsaber in the most realistic fashion yet.

The experience is called Star Wars: Jedi Challenges and it is being built for a new consumer AR headset that Lenovo is developing in collaboration with Lucasfilm and Disney, the companies announced at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, California. Not much information was given about the hardware, though Disney did say that users will be able to download apps onto their smartphones and then insert it into the headset, similar to Samsung's Gear VR, according to UploadVR. Disney also mentioned having full line-of-sight to the real world, as opposed to just staring into the headset display.

There is a short teaser video for the Jedi Challenges that is equally short on details, though it appear that the headset is a wireless solution. You can also see a special motion-controlled lightsaber accessory.


Other than lightsaber battles, Jedi Challenges will present other experiences from the Star Wars universe.

"One of the experiences discussed was 'Holochess' – as first seen played in a match between Chewbacca and R2-D2 in Star Wars: A New Hope. Like so many of the unforgettable moments from the Star Wars films, the technology to bring these experiences to life has never existed… until today," Lenovo stated in a blog post.

Disney is said to have also showed footage of a real-time ground battle game featuring troops, turrets, and AT-ATs, so it appears as though there will be plenty of Star Wars themed content to digest. As for when this will all be available, Disney did not say. In the meantime, you can sign up for receive more information as it available from Lenovo's Jedi Challenges landing page.