Google is turning Stranger Things characters into adorable augmented reality stickers

Google is adding augmented reality stickers for the Pixel, including official collections based on Stranger Things and Star Wars, among other franchises. The company says its Pixel 2 phones’ cameras are specifically optimized and calibrated for high-quality augmented reality, and it showed this off at today’s event with a variety of AR apps. One lets you watch League of Legends in augmented reality, and another lets you play with augmented reality Legos, similar to an app that already exists for Google’s Daydream VR platform.

In AR Stickers, character stickers can interact with each other — if you put Stranger Things heroine Eleven in a scene with her nemesis the Demogorgon, for example, she’ll quickly vanquish it. You can record these little scenes and send them to friends, in addition to watching them in real time.

ARCore was announced in late August, and it’s similar to Apple’s ARKit: a software platform that makes it easier for developers to build their own augmented reality apps. A preview version is available on the Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, and Google intends to support 100 million Android devices at a later, official launch date.

For an exclusive look at all the new Google devices announced, check out our interview with CEO Sundar Pichai.