With 500,000+ Units Shipped, Google Just Got Serious About Cardboard
...they’ve made a big round of updates to their entire Cardboard project and presentation today, starting with a total revamp of their official Cardboard site—and they’re hiring.
For developers, Google has launched a Cardboard SDK for Android and Unity. They say it takes care of the following items, allowing developers to get started on game and app creation rather than toiling with VR-specific necessities:
- User head tracking
- Side-by-side stereo rendering
- Detecting Cardboard-only user inputs such as the magnetic trigger
- Automatic stereo configuration for a specific Cardboard model
- Distortion correction for Cardboard lenses
- An alignment marker to help center the screen under the lenses
- A settings button that links to the Cardboard app for managing headset parameters
“We’re keeping the hardware and software open to encourage community participation and compatibility with VR content available elsewhere,” the company notes on their SDK page.
Google is laying the groundwork not just for Cardboard, but for plenty of other VR smartphone adapters that are already available. It’s clear they they want Android to become the place for mobile VR. What will be interesting to see is how the relationship between Cardboard and Gear VR pans out. Both run on Android, but neither are compatible with one another.
See the full story here: http://www.roadtovr.com/google-just-got-serious-about-cardboard-500000-units-shipped/