ILMxLAB Is Making Some Kind Of AR Porg Tamagotchi

Everybody loves porgs. Even The Last Jedi critics and/or haters love them, even if they refuse to acknowledge it themselves. Porgs are love. Porgs are life. Porgs are little.

ILM clearly realises this, and I mean, how couldn't they? They worked on the damn things. The effects studio's virtual and augmented reality offshoot, ILMxLAB, dropped a video today for an upcoming project, currently given the working title Project Porg:

So, you get to raise your own little porg, play fetch with it, pat it, have it raise its own porg family (though I'm sure the biology behind that is obscured somewhat), and so on. Cool! The creators enthuse about the fact that since it's AR, you can take your porg anywhere - even public spaces! Less cool. And the hint about "theme parks" is a none-too-subtle way of telling people to visit Disney's Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge park with their virtual porg in tow. So, you know, other people can walk horrifyingly through the AR projection of their new friends.

Of course, all of that requires one to be in possession of a Magic Leap augmented reality headset, which isn't yet available outside a "creator edition" and will likely be extremely expensive (not to mention lacking in content) when it is. AR's a cool technology, but man, the equipment has gotta basically become invisible for it to truly take off. Who knows - a couple decades from now, we might be putting AR creatures from the next Star Wars trilogy into our homes, as the world crumbles and burns outside.

Meanwhile, ILMxLAB has been turning out free VR experiences on the regular, focused on Darth Vader, the Rogue One rebels, droids, and more. Some are simple 360-degree videos; others are more involved VR projects or Galaxy's Edge-specific experiences. Very few people can access either. If you're one of those people, I'm super curious to hear about it, though.