Google Getting Into the VR Game

[Tom Bombadildo]

Google, the all-powerful jack-of-all-trades company, announced that they too will be getting into the VR game, but in an extremely different, cheap, and quite frankly awesome way. "Google Cardboard" is the name, VR is it's game.

Virtual reality has made exciting progress over the past several years. However, developing for VR still requires expensive, specialized hardware. Thinking about how to make VR accessible to more people, a group of VR enthusiasts at Google experimented with using a smartphone to drive VR experiences.

The result is Cardboard, a no-frills enclosure that transforms a phone into a basic VR headset, and the accompanying open software toolkit that makes writing VR software as simple as building a web or mobile app.

By making it easy and inexpensive to experiment with VR, we hope to encourage developers to build the next generation of immersive digital experiences and make them available to everyone.

The Source link contains the list of materials and instructions on how to build your own, as well as links to places you can buy the lenses and the NFC-sticker.

I love this, and I'm going to build one of my own sometime this weekend.

Source

 

[BORTZ]

/Checks calendar
well its not April first... huh.

 

[boomario]

"Can I use a pizza box for the cardboard?
Yes. Make sure you order an extra large."

 

[Gahars]

Now even the NEETest of NEETs can get in on the VR action.

The waifu age may yet come to pass after all!

 

[Nathan Drake]

If this is 100% legitimate and functional (I still have some questions as to how any of it would even actually work), wouldn't the VR market, ya know, collapse before even really getting off the ground due to this overwhelmingly cheap way to utilize VR in a user friendly fashion? Who needs Oculus Rift if, by the time that releases, Google's software development could be at the same level?

 

[Arras]

If this is 100% legitimate and functional (I still have some questions as to how any of it would even actually work), wouldn't the VR market, ya know, collapse before even really getting off the ground due to this overwhelmingly cheap way to utilize VR in a user friendly fashion? Who needs Oculus Rift if, by the time that releases, Google's software development could be at the same level?

I'd imagine an oculus is a lot more comfortable to press against your face than a bunch of cut out cardboard, for one. The resolution on this will probably also be much lower as it uses one smartphones as screen.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

If this is 100% legitimate and functional (I still have some questions as to how any of it would even actually work), wouldn't the VR market, ya know, collapse before even really getting off the ground due to this overwhelmingly cheap way to utilize VR in a user friendly fashion? Who needs Oculus Rift if, by the time that releases, Google's software development could be at the same level?

Technically, this is a very bare-bones VR solution. It doesn't have head tracking, only uses a simple magnet for "clicking" on the phone, and because this is Android there aren't exactly going to be AAA VR games like PC or the PS4 will have.

If anything, this is more of a "hey look VR can be a thing for even the cheapest of people" than an Oculus/Project Morpheus killer. I could see this being nice for watching movies or something, but I doubt it'll be used for anything else.