How Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge May Incorporate Lightsabers
By Ben Pearson/May 21, 2018 3:00 pm EST
The studio is gearing up for specialized lightsaber use in the park – and a new patent indicates that augmented reality is also going to be a factor.
Making Star Wars points us to a series of tweets from Len Testa, the co-author of The Unofficial Guide to Disney World, in which Testa shared one of Disney’s patent applications, which reveals the company’s plans to build their own lightsabers for sale in the park:
New Disney patent application yesterday is latest sign they’re trying to build lightsabers for Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge. Uses augmented reality, so maybe a helmet involved?https://t.co/KeX9gz4Xh7 pic.twitter.com/YmbsAXS8Yy
— Len Testa | mastodon.social/@LenTesta (@LenTesta) May 19, 2018
And – you knew this was coming – here’s the patent on how they’ll record and sell you a replay of your Galaxy’s Edge AR experience:https://t.co/57iMQPeYer https://t.co/dteN08xeJg
One of the coolest things about visiting The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios is watching young kids walk up to specific areas in the park, produce their magic wands, utter a spell and wave the wand around, and seeing their faces light up as the park reacts to them. It’s all linked electronically, of course, but the kids don’t know that – they truly believe in magic at that point, and this place uses hidden technology to make it real for them. (The reactions are priceless…but those specialized wands will cost parents a pretty penny. They’re still a business, after all.)
With that in mind, it’s not the least bit surprising that Disney is planning something similar with Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge lightsabers. I’d be more shocked if they weren’t developing something like this. But the part about recording the experience and selling you a replay of it? That seems new to me.
Diving into the nitty gritty of the patent details, I found an example of how all of this might work:
So a park guest wearing an AR-enabled helmet could theoretically walk around the park and go on a guided tour of Galaxy’s Edge, giving them an experience that essentially puts them inside an episode of VH1’s Pop-Up Video: you’ll see graphical overlays over certain objects, and likely be able to interact with them with your AR-enabled lightsaber.
Sounds cool, right? It is, but when I noticed some language about how one of the patented devices could collect “physiological sensor data (e.g., user’s heartrate)”, that makes me think we’re getting closer to Westworld than ever before. I don’t know if you’re caught up with this season, but that may not be the best thing for humanity.
