• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Exclusive

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump.

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump.

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump.

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump.

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump.

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump.

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump.

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump.

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump.

An hour in the Oval Office with President Trump.

TechStar Wars

HTC Vive ‘Star Wars’ VR Experience Premieres at GDC

By
John Gaudiosi
John Gaudiosi
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
John Gaudiosi
John Gaudiosi
Down Arrow Button Icon
March 15, 2016, 11:53 AM ET
ILMxLab

ILMxLab premiered its first virtual reality experience for the HTC Vive at the Letterman Digital Arts Center during the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco this week.

Star Wars Trials on Tatooine blends storytelling with video game mechanics, including lightsaber wielding, for a brand new way to experience Disney’s Star Wars universe.

Developed using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4 game technology, Trials on Tatooine begins in outer space with the traditional Star Wars score and block yellow text in the opening scroll. But only in virtual reality can viewers reach out and touch the words.

According to the game’s intro, Luke Skywalker has sent Han Solo and R2-D2 aboard the Millennium Falcon to his home planet of Tatooine to deliver a package to a Jedi apprentice—meaning you, the gamer in VR.

Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.

The action takes place on the desert planet, where the Falcon flies in and lands right beside you. You can literally feel the ship landing and kicking up air at you, courtesy of real fans circulating in the room. R2-D2 comes down the ramp as Han Solo shouts from inside the Falcon. (It’s not the voice of Harrison Ford, but actually that of The Walking Dead actor Ross Marquand, who sounds just like him.). As is usually the case with the beat-up Corellian freighter, there’s a problem with the ship and you have to help out. Using your own HTC Vive controller, which appears in the game world as a worn-out tool, you must pull down a ramp to give R2-D2 access to a generator and then hit a sequence of colored lights to get it powered up.

In the meantime, a pair of Imperial TIE fighter attacks force you to dodge laser fire. After Han takes them out with the Falcon’s guns, an Imperial Shuttle lands and unleashes a squadron of storm troopers. Fortunately, that package Luke sent you was a lightsaber. With the press of a button, the saber whooshes to life and you use the Jedi weapon to protect the gang and the Falcon from laser fire, sending incoming laser fire back at the stormtroopers.

The whole experience is only about five minutes long, but it seems like you’re on the planet surface for longer because you’re completely immersed. You can walk around, reach out, and touch things. Artoo is right there by your side. The gameplay with the lightsaber works so naturally with the Vive controller that you could envision entire game experiences using it.

According to Rob Bredow, who is head of ILMxLab and chief technology officer at Lucasfilm as well as the director of this Star Wars virtual reality experience, VR was made for holding a lightsaber, so that was the focus for development.

Roughly half of his team at ILMxLab comes from the video game industry, while the other half stems from other film and special effects fields. After years of talk in Hollywood about the convergence of movies and video games, virtual reality has finally made that dream a reality. Even though this Trials on Tatooine is just a short experiment using the Vive, Bredow posits it offers a good example of the type of experiences this new medium opens up for his team.

At GDC, Sony announced that Electronic Arts is working with Lucasfilm and DICE on an exclusive PlayStation VR Star Wars Battlefront game for this fall. This game will take some of the concepts from Trials on Tatooine to a full gameplay experience.

ILMxLab was able to create this playable demo in about nine months while also developing other projects simultaneously. Bredow’s team was also responsible for the recent Star Wars Holo-Cinema that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January. That augmented reality experiment allowed multiple people to stand in a room enveloped by giant wall and floor projection screens, depicting scenes of the Jakku desert from The Force Awakens. By wearing special 3D glasses, C3-PO and BB-8 come out of the walls and into the room.

ILMxLab is Lucasfilm’s laboratory for immersive entertainment with a team comprised of Lucasfilm, ILM, and Skywalker Sound engineers, artists, and special effects wizards. Aside from the aforementioned projects, ILMxLab is also the team behind The Force Awakens-Facebook 360 experience that Mark Zuckerberg unveiled at the Facebook F8 Developers Conference last year. The unit also developed VScout, which was showcased at Oculus Connect 2 in Los Angeles last year. Rogue One director Gareth Edwards used this virtual reality technology to enter computer-generated sets in pre-production for the upcoming anthology film.

Currently, ILMxLab is producing more virtual reality and augmented reality experiences while also assisting Walt Disney Imagineers design the new Star Wars lands for Disney World and Disneyland.

With the launch of Facebook’s Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive for consumers, the lab now has a new audience to target with home experiences. If this first Star Wars HTC Vive proof of concept is any indication of what’s possible, fans will never want to leave the virtual world—unless it’s to catch the 3D IMAX version of the latest Star Wars movie.

About the Author
By John Gaudiosi
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon

Latest in Tech

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Tech

Carl Fritjofsson smiles in a blue t-shirt
Startups & VentureTerm Sheet
The AI boom is pulling Europe’s hottest startups to the U.S.—whether they planned to move or not
By Lily Mae LazarusMay 18, 2026
26 minutes ago
SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell in Barcelona, Spain on March 2, 2026. (Photo: Angel Garcia/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
NewslettersFortune Tech
What to expect from a SpaceX IPO
By Andrew NuscaMay 18, 2026
2 hours ago
How a mom-and-pop car wash chain went from sticky notes to AI-powered operations that are upleveling every part of the company
AIAutomation
How a mom-and-pop car wash chain went from sticky notes to AI-powered operations that are upleveling every part of the company
By Sage LazzaroMay 18, 2026
3 hours ago
Outnumbered: At $4 billion ClickUp, a 3:1 agent-to-human ratio is rewiring work itself
AIAI agents
Outnumbered: At $4 billion ClickUp, a 3:1 agent-to-human ratio is rewiring work itself
By Sage LazzaroMay 18, 2026
3 hours ago
After AI stole his clients, one Big Tech ghostwriter is using AI to get them back
AIAutomation
After AI stole his clients, one Big Tech ghostwriter is using AI to get them back
By Sage LazzaroMay 18, 2026
3 hours ago
The smartphone’s days are numbered. Meet the device that could come next
AIsmartphones and mobile devices
The smartphone’s days are numbered. Meet the device that could come next
By Alyson ShontellMay 18, 2026
3 hours ago

Most Popular

Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI
AI
Microsoft AI chief gives it 18 months—for all white-collar work to be automated by AI
By Jake AngeloMay 16, 2026
2 days ago
The top foreign holders of U.S. debt may soon dump Treasury bonds and bring their money back home, potentially spiking borrowing costs
Economy
The top foreign holders of U.S. debt may soon dump Treasury bonds and bring their money back home, potentially spiking borrowing costs
By Jason MaMay 17, 2026
18 hours ago
The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
Politics
The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
By Jake AngeloMay 12, 2026
6 days ago
'No one was coming to save me': How Reese Witherspoon built a $900 million company from a problem Hollywood wouldn't fix
Success
'No one was coming to save me': How Reese Witherspoon built a $900 million company from a problem Hollywood wouldn't fix
By Sydney LakeMay 17, 2026
1 day ago
Former top Russian official admits the country is over Putin and can 'imagine a future without him' — even elites bail as Kremlin seizes their assets 
Politics
Former top Russian official admits the country is over Putin and can 'imagine a future without him' — even elites bail as Kremlin seizes their assets 
By Jason MaMay 16, 2026
2 days ago
SpaceX heads into a record-shattering IPO with the 'deepest moat that exists today' as investors vow to 'never bet against Elon'
Innovation
SpaceX heads into a record-shattering IPO with the 'deepest moat that exists today' as investors vow to 'never bet against Elon'
By Jason MaMay 16, 2026
2 days ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.