Virtual reality companies are now exploring on different ways to look for stories to combine the technology with, and using the world of Star Wars in virtual reality is one of the best ideas to showcase the innovation.
IGN recently reported that Industrial Light & Magic, the company behind the iconic special effects of Star Wars, has created a group that will make "immersive, story-based experiences" in virtual reality.
The company released a YouTube video that showed glimpses of what users can expect from the Star Wars virtual reality. The video showed someone playing a Stormtrooper with C-3PO and R2-D2. Another part of the video on the Star Wars virtual reality had someone using an Oculus Rift headset into an X-Wing cockpit, that allowed viewers to see scenes coming from the film.
"What we're aiming for is open the two-dimensional world of the movies and allow fans to walk into those worlds with the same visual fidelity," ILMxLab's creative director John Gaeta said in a report by Entertainment Weekly. "All that George [Lucas] begat caused a reassessment of innovation from movies to video games. The next 40 years of ILM is about exploding that universe with tech once again."
In partnership with Skywalker Sound and Lucasfilm, ILM's Star Wars virtual reality will reportedly be used in real-time cinema, theme park entertainment, augmented reality, and "narrative-based experiences for future platforms."
The Star Wars virtual reality will come with mass-market goggles, and that the first and most high-end experiences will be in the Disney parks, the IGN report added.
In 2012, Disney bought Lucasfilm from founder and director George Lucas for $4 billion. Lucas reportedly receives 40 million Disney shares from this agreement and is poised to become the second-largest non-institutional shareholder of Disney, Bloomberg News said.
"Creative storytelling was something that George Lucas instilled in each of the companies from the earliest days and out of that came the incredible innovation that continues to this day," Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm, said in the IGN report. "We are currently exploring the fictional universes of Star Wars, and I think a lot of people would like to be immersed in them."
