If you thought The Ring couldn’t get any scarier, think again.
A savvy programmer has figured out a way to make an iconic, albeit nightmarish, scene from 2002 horror film The Ring a reality.
Using Apple’s ARKit augmented reality software, the programmer was able to make a hauntingly real version of Samara, a young girl murdered in the film, crawl out of a TV and into his home.
Abhishek Singh posted the fear-inducing video to his YouTube channel on Wednesday.
The video lasts just over a minute and starts off by showing real footage from the Ring.
Samara walks toward the screen as it briefly cuts out, until suddenly she crawls out of the TV, stands up and walks toward him.
The amazingly detailed AR figure walks close enough to Singh that he appears to stumble backwards in fear, before he leaves the room completely.
Samara then follows him around his home, with her jet black hair covering her eyes and her realistic image even casting a shadow behind her.
Singh said he used Unity, an augmented reality developer program, as well as ARKit to create the simulation.
Programmer Abhishek Singh posted the fear-inducing video to his YouTube channel on Wednesday. The video lasts just over a minute but shows ‘The Ring’ villain following him
The video depicts the main villain from ‘The Ring,’ a young girl named Samara who was murdered. Singh said he used Unity, an augmented reality plugin that’s compatible with ARKit
Unity has a plugin that’s compatible with Apple’s ARKit.
Another developer, Mike Woods, also reenacted the scene using ARKit.
Woods posted the video to his YouTube channel last year, saying he showed his kids the scarily real simulation.
Apple launched ARKit last September as part of its annual iPhone event, where it also released the 10th anniversary iPhone X.
The new software became available on all iPhones with the release of Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 11.
ARKit is a developer platform that lets users have augmented reality capabilities in apps, such as Pokemon Go.
Augmented reality is a new type of technology that overlays animated images into real-life scenarios.
It differs from virtual reality, which transports users into simulated environments, typically using a headset.
Apple’s system uses the cameras on an iPhone to detect a flat surface, or ‘plane’ to put the virtual objects on, such as a table or floor.
Tim Cook has revealed that he is ‘incredibly excited’ about AR, but sees VR as isolating and ‘not profound’
With a combination of machine learning and the camera data, it can constantly adjust the image so the object appears secured to the correct surface without the ‘jitters’ or other AR systems.
ARKit also makes use of the camera sensor to estimate the total amount of light available in a scene and applies the correct amount of lighting to virtual objects.