ILMxLab

Regardless of how invested you are in the Star Wars universe, there has been a time in nearly every person's life when they imagined swinging a lightsaber around. The iconic weapon of the Jedi is such a cool piece of technology, it's hard not to want to be able to use one yourself in real life. Though you can buy replicas for fans of any age ranging from simple toys to expensive recreations, at the end of the day, they're just facsimiles. With ILMxLAB's Trials on Tatooine virtual reality experiment, you may only get to hold a HTC Vive controller, but it's undoubtedly a much more authentic lightsaber experience. We stepped into the world of ILMxLAB's Trials on Tatooine at Star Wars Celebration Europe this weekend, after waiting for many months to finally give it a go. Announced earlier this year, the experiment serves as a tech demo of sorts, letting ILMxLAB and the team at Lucasfilm try out some techniques to see what works and what engages the audience. In it, you're stranded on the home planet of Anakin and Luke Skywalker as a test of sorts for your Jedi training. That means you get a lightsbaber, and with it all the excitement it entails.

For nearly as long as Star Wars has been a pop culture phenomenon there have been video games trying to give us the experience of being there with Luke, Han and Leia during the galaxy's most troubling times. Advances in gaming hardware have gotten us pretty far some thirty years after the release of Star Wars, and last year's Star Wars Battlefront is arguably one of the most beautiful games to ever take place in that galaxy far, far away. But as gorgeous as the landscapes are to look at, you're still just looking at them on a 2D plane via your television or monitor. The outside world still creeps in around the edges, even if you're playing in the dark. That's where virtual reality makes all the difference. With the release of Oculus Rift and Valve/HTC's Vive coming this year, VR is set to have a massive impact on the gaming landscape. It's already started to actually, with developers having teased titles and experiences for the past year in the lead up to the consumer release of these new headsets. At this week's Game Developer's Conference, Lucasfilm and ILM debuted a new experience set in the Star Wars universe that finally puts us on the sandy wastes of Tatooine like no game ever has before.