Jonmichael Moy: Lego's new app uses an iPhone to breathe dragon fire over real-life bricks

Thursday, 30 November 2017

Lego's new app uses an iPhone to breathe dragon fire over real-life bricks

Lego has released an Apple ARKit-powered app - called Lego AR-Studio - that brings your Lego sets to life using augmented reality.

What that means is that after you’ve built certain Lego sets, you’ll be able to point an iOS device (running iOS 11) at the wonderful collection of bricks, and a fire-breathing dragon will magically appear on screen and set fire to your building.

The app will allow you to interact with the action on-screen so you’re not just a passive participant, and you can even record the scene using the in-app camera function.

A whole world of Lego

The app is free to download and use, but of course you’ll have to pay to buy the Lego sets, and any repairs to your Apple device that may be required after allowing your child to do Ninjago moves with it.

The app can populate the world that you start creating, meaning you go from having a single building in real life to a whole city in the app, bringing a new dimension instantly to your builds.

The lego sets included at launch are:

This isn’t the first time that Lego has had a foray into AR; as long ago as 2009 it was using AR in its stores so that you could see what the set would look like in your hands once put together. You can see a video of the in-store AR below:

As this is just the launch of the app, it’s fairly safe to assume that more sets, and more AR experiences, will be added over time.

With a Harry Potter AR game on the way too, it’s interesting to see another Warner Brothers IP getting the augmented treatment, showing that the studio clearly is putting its money into this emerging technology.