Trixi Studios have released a video demonstrating their latest project leveraging the AR and mixed reality power of Google’s Project Tango platform. The video features Star Wars: The Force Awakens character BB-8 and a gaggle of stormtroopers projected into reality and is one of the coolest things we’ve seen via Project Tango thus far.
Project Tango, the hardware and development platform based on augmented reality and computer vision systems, was unveiled last year and uses advanced depth and plus high resolution optical cameras to grab spatial and visual data from your environment. This data is fused with orientation and positional information to enable a spatially accurate representation of a captured environment.
Developers have had access to development kits for a little while now and Google recently celebrated early works from teams working on the platform via a competition.
See Also: Google’s ‘Project Tango’ Competition Winners Showcase the Tech’s Potential
This latest video, seemingly from developers calling themselves Trixi Studios, depicts footage of the real works with computer generated characters from the Star Wars universe overlaid into reality. The spherical droid BB-8 trundles through a car park and warehouse before the player is shown facing down Imperial (First Order?) Stormtroopers.
Although the Tango device generated the imagery is clearly being moved slowly to easy positional and environment tracking issues, the CG characters are locked impressively into position (with some drift evident on BB-B). The inclusion of a player-wielded blaster is the icing on the cake, making the demo a fully interactive first person AR shooter of sorts.
This is no official project though, and the team are keen to point out that “We are just huge fans of Star Wars!”. It’s a nice reminder of Project Tango’s potential in the AR space though, even if Project Tango’s intended audience is still manifestly unclear.