Someone made the ‘Take On Me’ music video come to life with AR and it’s glorious

Pack it on up, everyone — someone just won ARKit.

We’ve seen loooots of fun stuff made with ARKit already, but this one… this one is something special.

Back in 1984, A-ha released “Take On Me” — a painfully catchy song that would go on to be covered by every band until the end of time (sometimes, I’d argue, better than the original)

They released an initial music video for it and… well, it wasn’t great. In 1985, though, they sped up the track and took a second run at the video, and minds… were… blown. A young lady in a diner falls deep into the eyes of a comic book character (modeled after the band’s lead singer, of course)… only for said comic character to come alive and usher her into his hand-drawn world.

SOMEONE BUILT THAT IN ARKIT. A hand beckons you into its world; step through the portal, and everything — your couch, your lamp, even the people on the other side of the portal — turns animated, a window back into the real world hanging in the air behind you. Built by Chip Sineni and the Chicago-based AR development team at Trixi Studios, it’s a wonderful proof-of-concept as to just how crazy ARKit stuff can get. Think about it: All this stuff is bubbling up while iOS 11 — and thus ARKit — is still in preview mode.

So how’s it all working? A key part, says Sineni, is a bunch of “overlapping shaders.” Alas, any hope of releasing it to others might be stifled by music licensing issues.

For those who never saw it, the original (well, the good original) music video: