Google’s Answer To Virtual Reality – Cardboard Meets Android b4in.org/g5EJ Love them or hate them, Google is one of the more innovative companies that has ever existed in the course of human history. They are the company that sought to broaden the scope of internet connectivity to the farthest and poorest reaches of this planet via their Project Loon high-altitude balloon internet connectivity initiative at the same time they were developing a driverless car. They have made it as easy to cruise down the streets of San Tropez in Google Maps as it is to translate “May I please have a beer?” at the cafe you just drove past with the click of a mouse. In case you’re wondering, Google Translate lets you know that in San Tropez, all one must say to get a frosty brew is: Puis-je s’il vous plaît prendre une bière? And then, of course, there was the swift dominance over Apple in the smartphone market when Google announced their Android Operating System. This is a company with fingers in dozens of different pies. When Facebook announced their acquisition of Oculus for $2 billion, you had to know their foray into the emerging world of virtual reality (VR) would not go unanswered by the giant tech company up the road whose name has long been used in verb form. In the face of Zuckerberg’s obviously serious commitment to the new technology, you would have expected Google to pull out the heavy artillery for a clear and decisive response to the social network. But Google can be like the Spanish Inquisition that way. Much like that dark time in European history made humorous by Monty Python, no one expected this response from Google. Developed by two team members, David Coz and Damien Henry at the Google Cultural Institute in Paris, the Google Android VR project’s genius is in its simplicity. Coz and Henry worked in their 20 percent time, a portion of each day the company gives employees to work on their own passion projects, on developing the basic physical contraption that would eventually lead to the creation of a software development kit (SDK). Google unveiled the contraption and SDK this week at their developer conference to a chorus of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ from those in attendance. Google Cardboard is the $50 answer to Facebook’s $2 billion investment in VR technology. According to Taylor Hatmaker at readwrite, it is supported by a real and true desire to break into the virtual reality space. In a post about the project, Google explained: “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. More b4in.org/g5EJ
Posted on: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 06:03:54 +0000
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