'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' 360-Degree Video Explores Jakku

Lucasfilm and Disney have released a new way to explore one of the new environments in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, via a new 360-degree video standard available on Facebook.

A one-minute video puts viewers in the driver's seat of Rey's speeder bike, as the craft zips along the desert, and you can even hear BB-8 at the end of the ride. The video, which is more video game than cinema, allows the viewer to pan and tilt for a 360-degree view of a section of Jakku's landscape, complete with the ruins from the Battle of Jakku dominated by that massive crashed Star Destroyer we saw in one teaser.

Check out the Force Awakens 360-degree video below.

There's something in Facebook's new embeds that doesn't play well with our code, so click the image to head to the Star Wars Facebook page for the video. (Note, too, that the 360-videos will not play in Safari for desktop platforms.)

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens Immersive 360 Experience

Speed across the Jakku desert from Star Wars: The Force Awakens with this immersive 360 experience created exclusively for Facebook.

Posted by Star Wars on Wednesday, September 23, 2015

This is the second bit of new social media tech The Force Awakens has been leveraged to launch. The first was widescreen (and portrait) videos and images on Instagram, with footage of Finn and his lightsaber. What we really want to see out of this video is a proper VR render, especially since Facebook owns Oculus, and that company helped develop this video.

We'll be able to explore more of this environment in Star Wars Battlefront, which will feature a playable version of the Battle of Jakku.

Here's the official text on the video:

Today Facebook is excited to announce that they're rolling out 360-degree videos in News Feed.There are a number of publishers sharing new 360 videos on Facebook today, including Star Wars, Discovery, GoPro, LeBron James & Uninterrupted, NBC's Saturday Night Live, and Vice. This means publishers can now upload 360 video to Facebook and starting today, people around the world will be able to discover and experience 360 videos in News Feed. Disney and Lucasfilm are proud to debut an exclusive 360 experience from the upcoming movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens that brings fans inside the beloved universe.

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens will begin to hit theaters in Europe on December 16, and opens in the US on December 18.