Lenovo and Disney overnight unveiled Star Wars: Jedi Challenges, a new augmented reality Star Wars product that allows fans to experience Star Wars in ways never before possible. Jedi Challenges features a smartphone-powered Lenovo Mirage AR headset, Tracking Beacon, Lightsaber controller, and hours of Star Wars gameplay. Jedi Challenges is being unveiled as part of Force Friday II, which celebrates the worldwide launch of new Star Wars products. The product is compatible with both Android phones and iPhones.

“With Star Wars: Jedi Challenges, Lenovo and Disney are bringing Star Wars to fans in ways they could previously only imagine,” says Jeff Meredith, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Lenovo Consumer PCs and Smart Devices. “Augmented reality has always been an important part of Star Wars, and it’s exciting to bring these key moments to life by marrying Lenovo technology with Disney’s storytelling.”

Players will hone their Jedi talents across a variety of augmented reality-based experiences, each offering multiple levels of deep and immersive gameplay. To guide the player on this journey, Jedi Challenges will introduce an all new Star Wars character, the Archivist. The Archivist instructs players in the ways of the Force and the knowledge of the Jedi. Throughout these challenges, users will train to perfect their lightsaber skills by taking on some of the most menacing villains the dark side has to offer, command armies in combat missions to defeat the Empire, and outwit their opponents in Holochess, all in augmented reality.

Players can expect features such as Lightsaber Battles where, with your very own lightsaber, you can train against legendary dark side villains like Kylo Ren and Darth Vader. Star Wars: Jedi Challenges also encompasses strategic combat – Players marshal the forces of the Republic, Rebel Alliance, and Resistance against the might of the Separatists, Empire, and First Order in epic battles across their living room floors. Players can hone their skills in strategy and tactics as they engage in battles.

And then there’s Holochess. Perhaps one of the most iconic board games brought to film, Holochess first leapt into moviegoer hearts when it was played on the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. It has now been brought to life in Jedi Challenges. Fans can direct their holographic alien pieces across the board, wrestling for territory and control.

“We believe augmented reality will usher in a new era of storytelling and play an important role in the experiences we create for our fans,” said Kyle Laughlin, Senior Vice President, Games and Interactive Experiences, Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media. “With Star Wars: Jedi Challenges, we’re bringing together the latest technology and one of the most recognised franchises in the galaxy to fulfil the wishes of anyone who’s ever wanted to wield a lightsaber or take on empire forces on the battlefield.”

Players start by downloading the Star Wars: Jedi Challenges app onto their compatible phone and sliding the phone into the tray of the Lenovo Mirage AR headset. Sleek, portable and lightweight, the Lenovo Mirage AR headset will provide full gaming immersion with an optimal level of comfort during gameplay. The headset also comes with a Tracking Beacon, which is placed on the floor and acts as a stable base for the headset’s sensors to detect the user’s movement during gameplay.

Equipped with two built-in fisheye sensors to provide inside-out positional tracking, the headset allows for free and natural motion for the player to move around as they duel opponents or direct their forces and pieces across the battlefield.

The headset pairs with a collectible-quality Lightsaber controller, modeled after the one wielded by Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker, and Rey. Designed to be a key part of the experience, the Lightsaber acts as a controller and pointer, allowing players to navigate the user interface, with all controls, actions and commands activated with a simple two-button configuration.

Through visible light-tracking technology, the headset’s sensors work together to lock onto the position of the Lightsaber controller, allowing players to see a beam form above the “hilt”, which they can use to block and interact with the universe in-game. Haptic feedback is activated as players strike or block their opponents, while an inertial measurement unit sends rotational information from the controller to the smartphone to assist the beam in remaining stable mid-swing.

Star Wars: Jedi Challenges will be available from November in Australia and New Zealand at RRP $399AUD and RRP $449NZD respectively.

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Virtual Reality – I can’t say it without thinking about some early-1990s spandex-suit wearing cheesy vision of the future. But finally, it seems, after loads of false starts, VR is here.

I’ve been wanting to writing about virtual reality for a while now. This first part of a three-part series is a collection of thoughts and experiences that I’ve had around VR over the last year.

Imagine the scene, you are driving in your car, a getaway driver, racing from a heist. The car in front pulls over in front of you trying to cut you off. You can brake and risk the cops catching up with you of keep on going, nudging the car in front out of the way. You stamp on the accelerator, ramming the car, but you misjudge the impact and instead throw your Holden Commodore into a spin, hitting the walls of the Sydney Airport Tunnel.

Game over. Except it’s not. It’s real life, and you are on your way to work. You were playing the game last night, using your new VR kit.

Whilst we are still a long way away from VR experiences that are indistinguishable from real life. Already early adopters of virtual reality kit like HTC’s Vive and Facebook’s Oculus Rift are reporting a strange disconnection from reality when they remove their headsets after extended play session.

For many this weird feeling disappears after a while, but not for everyone. What happens after weeks of solid play sessions? Could a player become unable to distinguish reality from a VR environment?

The effects of long-term exposure to VR are an unknown and something that, no doubt, we will be hearing a lot about in the future.

As with all new technology, there’s is likely to be positives and negatives. But for every enthusiast that ends up having too much of a good thing, neglecting real life for their virtual existence, there are likely to be many other benefiting from this technology. Virtual reality will extend beyond games, offering people with disabilities experiences that they would be unable to have, as well as therapeutic applications and training opportunities.

VR first became a pop culture obsession way back in the early 90s, but it was likely Disney’s Tron, a decade earlier, that captured the public’s imagination as to what it would be like “living” in a computer game. For many, though, it was the abysmal Lawnmower Man starring Pierce Brosnan that was for many their first look at VR.

My very first experience with VR was with the commodore Amiga-powered Virtuality 1000. It had god-awful graphics and a huge headset, but it was my first taste of 3D gaming. Since then I’ve enjoyed 3D gaming using e-Dimensions’ system on PC and the built-in capabilities of modern consoles.

But in truth, I’ve been waiting for this moment in time, the dawn of REAL virtual reality.

The VR revolution has now started with the Facebook-backed Oculus Rift and Valve’s SteamVR platform, the HTC Vive being shipped out to the early adopters right now. Sony’s PlayStation VR is also about to join the party in October.

The fantasy of stepping into another world is an ancient one. One previously only fulfilled by dreams, hallucinogenic drugs or a vivid imagination. Virtual Reality enables the user to live on their dreams like never before- visiting new places and other worlds. It is an otherworldly experience that is difficult to explain to someone that has never experienced it.

At the moment the term virtual reality is being used to cover a multitude of different experiences, not all of which are actually VR. Popular culture terms all these as virtual reality devices: Google Cardboard, GearVR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

The key component of a VR experience is a sense of presence. Instead of feeling like an observer the use should feel as if they are there, physically in the scene.

Watching a 360-degree video on your mobile phone, slotted into a Google Cardboard or GearVR, is fun, but you are only watching a video. If you step left or right your perspective doesn’t change like it does in the real world, the video moves with you. The accelerometer in your mobile phone adjusts the image for your head movement, but that’s about it.  Some mobile VR applications render their experiences in real-time, but the computing power of today’s mobile phones puts a limit on the complexity of these scenes. You are very unlikely to have a real VR experience with a Google Cardboard or GearVR.

Augmented reality takes camera captured video and adds elements, like a building, object or overlays in real-time to create an augmented view of the real world. There are lots of AR apps available, making this very popular on mobile device. The was also the basis for the ill-fated Google Glass. AR offers a very similar experience to VR, but it’s not. It’s just enhancing the real world- not immersing us in a new one. Perhaps one day AR experiences will be able to totally overlay the real world with a VR environment, but we are not there yet.

Mixed reality takes augmented reality a step further, blending the real world with a virtual reality space to create a truly hybrid environment. Microsoft’s upcoming Hololens will be a good example of this when/if it is finally released.

Whilst Microsoft are rumoured to be working with Oculus to bring the Rift to the Xbox One, they are also threatening to turn VR on its head with their Holoportation technology.

Virtual Reality is going to make it very easy for people to visit far off places and see sights out of their physical and financial reach. Microsoft’s Holoportation takes it one step further in bringing other people to you. Two people in different locations, surrounded by 3D cameras and wearing Microsoft Hololens glasses, will be able to see each other, via lifelike 3D avatars, and intereact with each other as if they are standing in the same room.

Within ten years there’s going to be absolutely no reason to leave home. Virtual socialising may be the angle that Facebook are working on and their reasoning purchasing the Oculus Rift.

The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are currently the only commercially available VR devices. Technically speaking they both offer similar types of VR experiences, but it is the HTC Vive that currently offers the better VR experience.

Currently, the Oculus Rift only offers a seated or standing experience, due to the single IR-sensing camera that needs to be mounted in front of the user. Moving the headset out of the camera’s range will break the experience. Also the Rift’s motion controllers, Oculus touch, are not yet available, with players controlling their VR experience with a standard Xbox One controller.

HTC’s Vive gives users a more immersive VR experience with “room-scale” VR and motion controllers. Vive users can walk about in an area up to about 25m2 and use the motion controllers to interact with the VR environment. The controllers becoming an extension of their hands, tools or even weapons that move concurrently inside the VR experience. The 360-degree view, being able to walk about and having you hands “in the game” give Vive a true feeling of presence.

At PAXAUS 2015, I spoken to the guys from Melbourne’s Zero-Latency about their partnership with Dell, using the veteran PC vendor’s Alienware Alpha mini-PC’s, to create a virtual reality version of Laser Tag. Players equipped with Oculus headsets, faux rifles and a backpack mounted Alienware Alpha, run around in a warehouse that is transformed into a zombie-infested environment. It’s cutting-edge stuff right now, but I couldn’t help but thing that it is going to soon become commonplace.

I tried Rebellion’s Battlezone using the PlayStation VR at PlayStation’s 20^th Anniversary event last year. It was a truly immersive experience really feeling like I was setting in the cockpit of a tank whizzing around a Tron-like battleground. Whilst it’s wasn’t my first VR experience, at the time it was the most impressive. And that’s not bad considering it was still not the final version of Sony’s entry into the VR arena.

It seems that technology has, for the most part, caught up with the dream the early-90s dream of Virtual Reality. We are finally able to step into other worlds, or make our own.

I can honestly see no end to the application of VR in our lives.

Using programs IrisVR’s Prospect, designers can immerse themselves in life-size versions of their work. With VR technology, clients can physically walk through their new house or examine their new product up close.

Historians and archaeologists now have the opportunity to recreate the past in VR allowing modern visitors to experience their ancient heritage like never before.

The applications for VR, aside from games, are limited only by our imagination, and our imagination is about to go into overdrive.

End of part one.

The post The VR Revolution Part One: The Future Today appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Ubisoft has announced that Trackmania Turbo will be compatible with Oculus Rift and with PlayStation VR, once both the game and these devices are available. Trackmania Turbo is the latest instalment in the Trackmania franchise, developed by Nadeo, a Ubisoft studio.

The Trackmania series is known for its thrilling and fast gameplay experiences and Virtual Reality is a natural fit for the series, by allowing players to immerse themselves deeper into the game when racing along the mesmerizing Trackmania tracks.

Players can experience the entire Trackmania Turbo game, including all tracks and game modes, whether they are playing on a console or computer, or with the additional VR device.

Trackmania Turbo features an “easy to learn, hard to master” arcade racing universe with time-attack gameplay where players set their own limits and challenges. The game revolves around an exhilarating combination of matchbox car fantasy and massive scale, focused on the pursuit of the perfect run around the track. Players can test their skills in the campaign mode, which includes more than 200 head-spinning tracks set in four beautiful environments, each with their own play style.

Trackmania Turbo will be released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows 10 PC in early 2016.

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