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Finding ways to keep people excited about popular game and movie franchises just became a little easier, as Sony’s God of War and Disney’s Star Wars are now leveraging ARKit to offer interactive augmented reality experiences on iOS 11 devices. Fans of Star Wars will be particularly excited to see a longtime wish fulfilled via the magic of AR.
Previously requiring a Lenovo Mirage AR headset, lightsaber controller, and tracking beacon, Disney’s Star Wars: Jedi Challenges app has been updated with ARKit support in version 1.3. To celebrate, Disney is offering a full AR Holochess mode for free, enabling you to place the iconic circular creature-driven chess game — sometimes known as Dejarik — on any flat surface.
Thanks to smooth 3D graphics and realistic textures, the Holochess table looks essentially photorealistic, and can be viewed or played at any angle through an iPhone’s or iPad’s screen. Each of the creatures appears as a hologram floating on top of the metallic board — a visual trick that blew minds when debuted on the Millennium Falcon in the original 1977 Star Wars film. The AR version includes 18 levels spread across six planets, plus eight unlockable creatures.
Separately, Sony has debuted the AR app God of War – Mimir’s Vision, letting players dig into the impressive world map and lore of the soon-to-be-released PlayStation 4 title. Unlike Disney’s release, the AR experience in God of War isn’t a game, but the impressively three-dimensional relief map of Midgard can be manipulated and moved around as if it’s really sitting on a table, with tappable points of interest to explore.
God of War – Mimir’s Vision is the PlayStation’s first AR tie-in app, and comes in both iOS ARKit and Android ARCore versions. The free Holochess feature of Star Wars: Jedi Challenges is currently exclusive to iOS. Both are available now for download from their respective app stores.
