We have been hearing about Virtual Reality for a long time now, but only few of us have had the opportunity to experience it. Major software companies are trying to get in the game. Facebook bought Oculus rift in 2014 for a heafty price of $2 billion, it was one of the first and biggest crowd-funded VR projects. Microsoft came up with the project Hololens (which is quiet awesome). These projects use expensive and specialized hardware to implement VR. So Google in its last year's I/O came up with a very simple solution, project Cardboard.
Cardboard provides an immersive experience using a simple Do-It-Yourself (DIY) kit and a phone. You just need cardboard, 40mm lenses for keeping the phone screen on focus, velcro, glue, a pair of scissors, a small magnet and a rubber band. All the schematics for the design are provided by Google. Even if you don't want to make this yourself you can buy it on Amazon or eBay for $3-$10. It is worth the price.
There is a dedicated app on PlayStore named "Cardboard". It has a few demos for the Cardboard.
- Earth: Fly where your fancy takes you on Google Earth.
- Tour Guide: Visit Versailles with a local guide.
- My Videos: Watch your videos on a massive screen.
- Exhibit: Examine cultural artifacts from every angle.
- Photo Sphere: Look around the photo spheres you've captured.
- Windy Day: Follow the story (and the hat) in this interactive animated short from Spotlight Stories.
Google has also provided a cardboard SDK for Unity game developers to implement VR in their games and you can find quiet a few games using the SDK already.
In this year's I/O, Google introduced a new new way of capturing video. It is an array of 16 cameras named Jump. They are synchonized to produce a 360 degree video. YouTube is now supporting 360 VR video. You can see in all directions when the video is playing. It is like a full-circle moving panorama.
Check out this 360 degree video. Open this on your phone and just move the phone around.