Lenovo and Disney have partnered to bring a new Star Wars-themed app to life using a never before seen AR headset developed by Lenovo.

Revealed at the 2017 D23 Expo, the AR experience called Star Wars: Jedi Challenges was “designed to give Star Wars fans an opportunity to recapture some of their favorite moments from Star Wars films in ways never before possible,” including Holochess—and evidenced by the lightsaber prominently featured in the teaser—also a lightsaber sequence that the creators calls “essential for any Jedi experience.”

Information regarding Lenovo’s AR headset is still thin on the ground. From the trailer, it appears the headset is a smartphone-based device with a reflective display, a design concept explored by early AR startups like META and SEER. If the new Lenovo AR headset does indeed follow that concept, it would store a display panel (in this case a smartphone) in the top portion of the headset and reflect the image on the two panes of glass in front of your eyes. At least two equally-spaced integrated cameras can been seen in a close-up, most likely used for positional tracking.

The teaser video says a “compatible mobile device is required” to run the app.

image courtesy Lenovo

Lenovo/Disney suggest signing up for the Star Wars AR experience at www.jedichallenges.com. Upon signing up for updates, the website flashes this message:

We will let you know when Star Wars™: Jedi Challenges is available for pre-order.

The experience is said to arrive soon via Best Buy and Lenovo.com.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • GreasyMullet

    Ugh I cant stand using the phone VR’s. Just lost all excitement for this.

    • Johan Pruijs

      Me tooo!!

    • victor

      same here!

  • Lucidfeuer

    So basically they are adding the missing external camera/tracking component to a smartphone? I’d like to know the exact specs and challenges that prevents them from using on-smartphone Tango-like camera system.

  • So it is like an improved version of Aryzon?

  • Ted Joseph

    I have a Rift, and love it. I cant wait to see what companies will bring in the near future! Awesome time to be alive!!

  • Martin Neumann

    Since the SEER is pretty useless without software I wrote a small lightsaber demo for it, which was a hit on the last birthday of my son ;-) (here is a small clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0PYWDT9pOk) Actually I had the idea back in 2013 and thought about implementing it for the universe2go device (which was the first smartphone based AR device on the market!) but it is quite challenging to make this work smoothly enough to be more than a fun demo. I am really curious about what Lenovo will come up with!

  • Thoreau

    Yeah. Hopefully Lenovo’/Disney will let us buy an actual lightsaber with the game, using it as a controller. That would indeed increase the level of immersion of lightsaber training. Just like its done in “The New Hope” – related to what Mr. Neumann is posting further down.