What it's like to have a lightsaber battle with Kylo Ren in augmented reality

Have you ever wondered what it'd be like to have a lightsaber battle with Darth Vader or Kylo Ren?

You won't have to rely solely on your imagination for much longer because Star Wars: Jedi Challenges, the combination augmented-reality headset that lets you fight evil Sith with a physical lightsaber hilt is finally launching in November. I got to try it out at the IFA tech trade show in Berlin. 

Our early verdict: It's pretty fun, but it still needs some fine-tuning.

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The headset's available for pre-order in the U.S. on Sept. 1 for $199.99 on JediChallenges.com, Best Buy, and Lenovo.com, and launches in November.

Rather than try to be a do-everything AR headset, the Jedi Challenges game was designed by Lenovo and Lucasfilm to provide three expansive Star Wars experiences.

"Lightsaber Battles" which lets you become a Jedi and duel villains like Darth Vader and Kylo Ren, "Holochess" which lets you play alien chess like in Star Wars: A New Hope, and "Strategic Combat" which is a real-time strategy type experience that'll let you command armed forces from the Republic, Rebel Alliance, and Resistance to fend off the Separatists, Empire, and First Order.

Image: lenovo

These aren't mere mini-games. Lenovo says Jedi Challenges includes up to 60 hours of content and the app will be continuously updated to add more. Some of the new content will be free and some will be pay-to-play.

"The content, while pretty specific, is pretty rich. We felt like this idea of identification of really interesting and compelling content, even if aimed at a specific property like Star Wars, really was an important dimension for an AR device," Jeff Meredith, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Consumer Business Segment for Lenovo PCs and Smart Devices, told Mashable.

Like mobile VR headsets, Jedi Challenges is powered by your smartphone (iOS or Android). Once that's inserted into the headset and an included wireless motion-tracking beacon is placed on the floor, you can start swinging your lightsaber.

The headset includes two built-in fisheye lenses to provide inside-out tracking, just like with many of the Windows 10 mixed reality headsets announced at IFA. Haptic feedback inside of the lightsaber controller will also activate with every attack and block,. The lightsaber also acts as a pointing device for navigation within the game's menus.

So, how is the headset and does the lightsaber dueling live up to its hype? 

Image: STAN SCHROEDER/MASHABLE

To start, the headset is incredibly light, even with a phone inserted inside. The straps are easily adjustable, and the mirrors that reflect your phone screen in front of you didn't weigh my face down at all. It never slipped off my face during my demo of "Lightsaber Battles."

As soon as the game started, I pressed a button on the lightsaber and a blue beam of energy extended from it. The first thing I noticed was that the beam was not aligned properly with the small illuminated crystal on the tip of the lightsaber controller. It looked as if the blade was floating an inch away from the saber and it immediately threw things off.

That said, the most impressive thing was the headset's field of view. It's much wider than the tiny floating FOV found on the HoloLens. Lenovo says it has a 60-degree horizontal FOV and 30-degree vertical FOV. It's not the best, but it's also not the worst.

The game's pretty straightforward. As Kylo Ren's hologram appears and starts coming towards you, an outline of where you should move your lightsaber to appears. It's like an assisted guide and kind of made the duel feel more like it was designed for kids. I'm not sure if this is a tutorial and the assistive lightsaber guidelines will disappear or not. On-site reps couldn't give me any concrete answers.

Image: STAN SCHROEDER/MASHABLE

These small shortcomings were annoying but didn't change the fact that I quickly got lost in trying to strike Kylo down. The vibrations from the controller added to the immersion, even at times when it was difficult to see Kylo's holographic body easily. I imagine playing in a darker room would have made it easier to see his AR hologram.

Normally I'd say Jedi Challenges is half-baked, but that wouldn't be fair. The headset I tried was a pre-production, so things are still being tweaked and the final version could be a lot better. I also didn't get to try out the other two games. 

Minor issues aside, what I really liked about the headset was how much fun it was. I immediately became so engrossed with hacking at Kylo that I really did forget where I was until I defeated him and had to take the headset off.

"One of the struggles people have with adoption of AR and VR is content. There's a lack of clarity on how to use [headsets] and what the device will give you. So if you focus it on a specific property with an array content experiences, it gives the device a very clear meaning."

Image: stan schroeder/mashable

Meredith says Lenovo started working on the Jedi Challenges AR headset about 12 months ago when it began deeper discussions with Disney. The partnership was a natural fit since Lenovo's had tons of experience developing AR hardware. The company was the first to launch a Tango-ready phone last year that includes a 3D depth sensor to accurately see the real-world.

Augmented reality, whether it's displayed through smartphones or headsets like Microsoft's HoloLens, is set to become a tech disrupter in ways VR hasn't.

With AR, users can still see the real world around them even when digital objects are overlaid on top of physical space and objects. 

Jedi Challenges is interesting, not only because it's so affordable (for an AR headset), but because it marries together the latest in cutting-edge tech with a well-known property like Star Wars to deliver very specific gameplay fantasies. 

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