(2014-06-26) Google Cardboard Vr

Google launched Google Cardboard at their Google Io dev conference. A cardboard HeadSet to stick your Android Mobile in and get Virtual Reality?

Depending on who you ask at I/O, Google went ahead with this project either because it wanted to show that FaceBook overpaid for Oculus Rift or because it is jealous that it couldn’t acquire it. According to David Coz, however, who works for Google’s Cultural Institute in Paris, Cardboard was simply a project he felt like working on. “I’m a big VR fan,” he said, adding that there has been so much progress in this space in the last few years. With Cardboard, he wanted to see how he could build a VR viewer in the “simplest and cheapest way.” The project started about six months ago. After Coz showed it to Google Research scientist Christian Plagemann in Mountain View, it became his 20 percent project, and the company decided to go ahead with it for a larger project.

Google's Cardboard app, which is what plays on the phone screen while it sits in the cardboard casing, lets you cruise through a landscape or city street in Google Earth and watch YouTube videos in a virtual theater. Even wackier Web-based experiences -- what Google is calling Chrome Experiments -- let you play a simple coin-collecting game, visit the Great Barrier Reef in a helicopter, and ride a roller coaster. That only one of the more than a dozen apps you can access with Cardboard is game-related is a boon for VR too, proving that you can design worthwhile and interesting experiences in a first-person view.

You can buy an unofficial kit for $20.