Apple's augmented reality demo.
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Hands-on with Apple’s augmented reality demo of Star Wars Holochess

Apple showed off its new augmented reality technology today at its Worldwide Developer Conference in San Jose, California. The company’s new ARKit developer platform should enable AR developers to make apps that can run on hundreds of millions of existing iPads and iPhones.

I got a few hands-on demos of the software running on a new iPad, including the demo below of Star Wars Holochess, which is a take of the holographic chess game from A New Hope. You can play the game against any backdrop. In this case, the real tabletop served as the background for the game. In it, you simply tap a spot on the board where you want your monster to go. And if you tap on another monster, yours will attack it.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.