The charm of LEGO is its simple, creative potential, letting children build whatever they
can imagine — of course, their creations (usually) can't fly around the room breathing fire.
That’s where augmented reality comes in. LEGO AR-Studio, a free iOS app launching today, lets you control animated characters in the real-world and record their favourite bits in short video clips.
"This app is a completely new play from LEGO, mixing the physical and digital," says Tom Donaldson, VP of the Creative Play Lab at the LEGO Group. "You hold an iPhone or an iPad in your hand, and you can see your surroundings on the screen — your room, your table, that sort of thing. It can sense surfaces, and you can place virtual LEGO models into your real world."
Donaldson explains it's not only an overlay, but a 3D model that understands the real-world scene children have placed it in. The app is only supported in iOS 11 and above, and there's no word when it might land on Android. Donaldson says that's down to Apple's ARKit, it's built-in framework for augmented reality, which is only available on iPhone 6s and up running iOS 11.
The LEGO kits available at launch include classics such as the police station, train set and fire station, as well as Ninjago models, including the dragon. The sets aren't only virtual — they're also available to buy in your local LEGO store. "They are very close to the real set and are intended to help you explore how you'd play with the real set if you did go out and buy it," Donaldson says. Parents, be warned.
But the app isn't a replacement for the modular blocks. "We really see LEGO as a creative tool, but there's always been these extra layers to help the kids imagine," he says, pointing to television shows, films and games. "Around the physical creative play we've always put 'play starters' or ways to help the kids imagine and enjoy the play more deeply. This virtual layer can help the kids do the same thing."
Donaldson explains that children playing with the app bring their own LEGO sets into the scene. "Kids do reach out and try to bring their own physical LEGO models into the scene they're playing with," he said. "We have seen children do this 'one hand in each world', they actually play with some physical LEGO that they added to the scene and with the AR as well."
In other words, even if your children are playing with augmented reality LEGO, you might still find yourself stepping on the real thing.
In the future, LEGO would like to have AR recognise the physical blocks, letting the virtual and the plastic interact. "We would love to be doing that, and it's certainly something we're actively exploring," but it's sometime in the future, Donaldson says.
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/lego-ar-app
