Imaginations come to life with Lego’s first augmented reality app. Capture the flurry of dragons, trains, and pirate ships on video!

Following the success of Pokemon Go, is it any wonder that other companies are trying to enter the world of augmented reality? Next in line is iconic Danish toy company Lego, who are about to launch their first AR app, called Lego AR-Studio.

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The free app, launching tomorrow, will be available for Apple devices running iOS 11, including the iPhone SE, iPad, and iPad Pro. Blocks that are viewed through the camera come to life — moving, making sounds, and interacting with each other.

Upon release, the app will work with six existing Lego sets. The first three, a police station, a fire station, and a train set, come from the “City” series. The remaining three belong to the “Ninjago” series, and include a dragon, a robot, and a pirate ship.

How fascinating would it be to see police car headlights light up or pirate sails flutter in the wind? Until tomorrow, it’s all speculation as to what the sets will do, but Tom Donaldson, VP of Lego’s Creative Play Lab, gave a sneak peak in an interview with The Memo:

“If you bring the fire-breathing dragon near to a model policeman, they’ll start responding to it.”

Lego Both On and Off the Screen

Apart from turning imagination into reality, Lego AR-Studio comes with another important feature: The ability to record it all! Kids can capture their fantastical adventures on film, either to relive them another day or show them to friends and family.

It’s Donaldson’s intention to grow the AR experience by linking it to other sets. Needless to say, Lego’s primary focus will always be on the physical blocks.

“Obviously a lot of kids are spending a lot of screen time and parents sometimes worry about that,” he says, “but Lego bricks still are absolutely fantastic, and there is no way augmented reality means that you don’t need the bricks.”

In fact, he hopes that AR will draw more attention from the screen to the real world:

“We hope that mixing the physical and digital can help stop kids getting lost in their devices, bringing them back towards being more social and physically interactive.”

With Lego and Star Wars entering the world of AR, it stands to reason that other toy companies will soon follow.

AR continues to enhance the world around us. With big names like Lego, Disney, and Pokemon all entering the ring, it’ll be interesting to see who follows…

Source: The Memo