This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on September 18, 2018

Created by ILMxLAB and The VOID, guests can enjoy a fully immersive experience of the Star Wars universe unlike any other in Genting Highlands.

The first multi-sensory immersive experience of its kind in Asia blurs the physical and virtual worlds, offering great fun.

Resorts World Genting (RWG) and The VOID recently announced the first-of-its-kind hyper-reality experience Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire will be coming to Asia later this year.

It will be The VOID’s first venture outside of the US and the UK, making this experience at RWG the first in Asia.

This location-based virtual reality (VR) experience will be one of the key attractions at the resort which received almost 25 million visitors last year.

Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire takes guests on a breathtaking journey into the Star Wars universe, allowing them to walk freely and untethered on an interactive stage.

By combining reality and fantasy, it evokes all the senses, with guests feeling the impact of blaster bolts, catching whiffs of the smoke from the surrounding environment, pushing buttons to solve an interactive puzzle to escape enemies, all while coordinating directly with their units in real time via the blending of the virtual and physical worlds.

“In Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire, you can hear, feel, touch and even smell to get closer to the story, characters and places,” The VOID chairman Craig Watson said.

“We are proud to be partnering with The VOID to deliver world-class content and cutting-edge technology, providing our visitors with an exciting experience that will be the first of its kind in Asia,” RWG senior vice president of theme park Brian Machamer said.

Vicki Dobbs Beck, executive in charge of ILMxLAB, said “our goal is for people to ‘step inside our stories’ and now Malaysian and Asian audiences will have the opportunity to do just that as they experience the excitement and adventure of Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire”.