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Home / News / Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine VR experience brings the Force to HTC Vive

Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine VR experience brings the Force to HTC Vive

After the weekend's leak, now we have a proper trailer

If there’s a fictional universe that loads and loads of people would love to immerse themselves in, it’s surely Star Wars – and virtual reality holds the key to making that feasible in a way we’ve never seen before. And it’s happening.

Following this weekend’s leaked trailer, the ILMxLAB has revealed Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine, a “cinematic virtual reality experiment,” as the first clip suggests. And as the trailer shows, the app is built for the HTC Vive, although it’s not yet known whether this will be en exclusive Vive release.

Check out the trailer and you’ll see a dream experience for Star Wars lovers: wielding a lightsaber freely in first person, interacting with R2-D2, and seeing the Millennium Falcon in immersive 3D. It’s likely not a full-fledged game, given the “experiment” status, but it’s still a playable Star Wars experience in VR.

Lucasfilm released the Jakku Spy experience for Cardboard in the Star Wars mobile app late last year, but the level of visual fidelity and interactivity here are sure to be dramatically higher all around. Then again, you’ll need a £689 headset and a beefy PC to run it, not just your smartphone inside a small cardboard box.

So far there’s no word on when to expect Trials on Tatooine, but the first HTC Vive units are slated to hit early buyers on 5 April – just a week after Oculus Rift units reach their first buyers.

And there’s plenty more in the pipeline, apparently: ILMxLAB also posted a new job recruitment video that shows more footage of Trials on Tatooine, along with other virtual and augmented reality experiences in the works. You’ll also see the Oculus Rift‘s Touch controllers in that video, so don’t be surprised if Trials on Tatooine and/or other Star Wars experiments make their way to the Rift.

[Source: RoadtoVR via Engadget]

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Profile image of Andrew Hayward Andrew Hayward Freelance Writer

About

Andrew writes features, news stories, reviews, and other pieces, often when the UK home team is off-duty or asleep. I'm based in Chicago with my lovely wife, amazing son, and silly cats, and my writing about games, gadgets, esports, apps, and plenty more has appeared in more than 75 publications since 2006.

Areas of expertise

Video games, gadgets, apps, smart home

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