The LEGO Group gets digital with LEGO FUSION, powered by Vuforia [VIDEO]
Many of us played with LEGO® bricks when we were kids. (Some still do—a co-worker down the hall has a LEGO Millennium Falcon sitting on the shelf above his desk.) But until now, the only way to bring our amazing LEGO brick masterpieces to “life” was to move them with our hands. LEGO’s Future Lab has changed everything with LEGO FUSION, which uses the Qualcomm® Vuforia™ mobile vision platform to marry the real world with the digital realm.
To experience LEGO FUSION, you simply build one of the available three Fusion sets—Battle Towers, Town Master or Resort Designer. Following are some snaps of my progress with one of the kits…
Now the real…uh, virtual fun begins. After you build the initial kit, you download the free app onto your mobile device. Once the app has loaded and started, you point your device at the finished LEGO set and things come life on screen.
Check out the video from LEGO (you can see the kit I built right from the start):
What’s really cool is that LEGO FUSION is not just a passive viewing experience—it’s interactive, challenging you with tasks that center on your LEGO FUSION set. For instance, with Battle Towers, you are challenged to upgrade your castle defenses; in Town Master and Resort Designer, you must meet the demands of your town’s residents.
Future updates to the games will allow your models to be stored in the cloud so that you can save them and continue on another device, even after you’ve put away your bricks. You can even “visit” other people’s towns and towers, or compete against your friends’ racing times.
LEGO FUSION is transforming the way we play with LEGO—try it. Battle Towers, Town Master and Resort Designer are now available for $34.99 each at LEGO online as well as LEGO stores and Toys R Us. The LEGO FUSION app is available on the Apple App Store, Google Play, Samsung Apps and the Amazon Appstore for Android.
Developers: Learn more about the Toy Recognition feature coming to the Vuforia platform at Uplinq 2014 in San Francisco, September 18 & 19.
