HoloLamp is working to make Star Wars dejarik a reality
Holochess—or dejarik as it’s known in the Star Wars universe—may be coming to a table near you soon.
HoloLamp is a start-up company that has crafted an augment reality projector. This device can project holographic images into the real world. The projections can augment anything, from a dejarik board to LEGO Star Wars playsets.
As it turns out, dejarik actually inspired the first builds of HoloLamp. Dejarik first arrived in the Star Wars universe in A New Hope when R2-D2 played against Chewbacca on the Millennium Falcon. It later made a second appearance in The Force Awakens.
HoloLamp isn’t the first company to announce a holochess-inspired AR experience. Back in September, I covered HoloGrid: Monster Battles. That AR mobile game is created in part by Phil Tippett, who originally animated the holochess sequences in Star Wars using stop motion. HoloGrid isn’t out yet, but it plans to use mobile phones and physical cards to create a 3D augmented reality scene.
Screenshot of a HoloLamp demo.
HoloLamp is a bit different, however. Instead of cards or a VR device, the projector simply casts a holographic image on a table. It also isn’t limited to holochess. The company hopes to focus the tech on three areas of application: video games, education, and communications.
According to the tech website Techaeris, HoloLamp plans to launch a crowd-funding campaign in the first quarter of 2017. A developer pack for the projector is also available on Windows 10 and MacOS.
[…] Spatial Augmented Reality delivers a glasses-free and hands-free Augmented Reality experience using the way our eyes perceive 3D objects to allow you to perceive a 3D experience. The systems do this by tracking the users eyes and projecting the image they would expect to see if it was a 3D object.
[…]
HoloLamp is a desktop version of this Spatial Augmented Reality projection system combining a pico projector and cameras when attached to a computer and using a 3D environment created in Unity the user can experience a hands and glasses-free spatial augmented reality experience. It uses computer vision and machine learning to optimise the effect as you watch the game or interact with your lego mini-figs. HoloLamp.io have a number of demo videos showing some of the ideas that are currently being worked on but any environment where seeing and interacting with a 3D model could be a candidate for this type of environment.
To find out more about HoloLamp, you can visit the company’s website.
I’ve also embedded a demo video below that features holographic dejarik and augmented LEGO Star Wars playsets:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYB1OSFw3D0
