Google Daydream View is the coziest VR headset
It’s more high-tech than it looks
http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/4/13156964/google-daydream-view-virtual-reality-headset-hands-on

When Google revealed its Cardboard virtual reality platform back in 2014, it launched an endless series of conversations in which I tried to explain why a $20 piece of cardboard wasn’t the same as an Oculus Rift. The two might both get called “VR,” I protested, but their technology and design created two fundamentally different ways to interact with virtual worlds.

Two years later, Google has another VR platform. This one is called Daydream, and it’s launching on the Pixel and Pixel XL phones, along with a $79 headset called Daydream View. More compatible phones and headsets are expected in the next several months

Daydream View, which will come out early next month, is roughly comparable to Samsung’s Gear VR. Both are goggles that turn phones into virtual reality headsets, combined with a custom controller that’s far more complex than Cardboard’s single-button setup.

Daydream feels a little cheap, but not fragile or shoddy

Like the Gear VR, the Daydream View has a single strap that holds it around your head. The strap is designed to be easily tightened by pulling two buckles along its length, and it keeps the headset on just fine, even if mine felt like it kept slipping very slightly. The mask, when I kept it at the right angle, also shut out light about as well as most decent VR headsets.

Daydream doesn’t guide users to perfectly center their phones. Instead, a pair of capacitive bumps tell the screen where it’s positioned, and the image automatically aligns itself to match.

More than the materials or ergonomics, what sets Daydream’s hardware apart is its controller, an oblong disc with a clickable trackpad, two menu buttons, and a volume rocker.

While Google was vague about cross-compatibility earlier this year, it’s now confirming that any Daydream headset should work with any Daydream phone.

Daydream: Bringing high-quality VR to everyone
https://blog.google/products/google-vr/daydream-bringing-high-quality-vr-everyone/

In the U.S., Daydream View will be available for pre-order starting October 20 at Verizon and the Google Store. Slate will be available in all countries at launch

This project is an attempt to develop a VR shooting demo and the associated hardware on a budget, complete with tracking so that the gun can be aimed independent of the user’s view. [matthewhallberg] calls it The Oculus Cardboard Project, named for the combined approach of using a Google Cardboard headset for the VR part, and camera-based object tracking for the gun portion. The game was made in Unity 3D with the Vuforia augmented reality plugin. Not counting a smartphone and Google Cardboard headset, the added parts clocked in at only about $15.

The Oculus Cardboard Project
DIY Virtual Reality Gun For Google Cardboard
http://www.wirebeings.com/virtual-reality-gun.html

The rock god and astrophysicist has a long-standing fascination with 3D imagery, leading him to create the wallet-friendly Owl viewer.

If Brian May could capture one moment from his life so that others could step inside that moment and experience it, it would be the time he strode onto the roof of Buckingham Palace alone except for his guitar and played to 200 million people.

“I’d love people to know what that felt like,” said the Queen guitarist. “It was a whole life-changing experience for me.”

The band filmed its recent Barcelona concert with 360-degree cameras that zoomed around the gig on a four-point wire system suspended over the crowd — the type of camera you’ve probably seen flying over arenas and sports fixtures. You’ll be able to soak up the atmosphere, both on stage and from within the crowd, by watching the resulting VR experience through a wallet-friendly 3D and VR viewer developed by May himself, called the Owl.

Like the make-it-yourself Google Cardboard viewer, the Owl viewer holds a smartphone in front of two lenses so when you look through it you can see glorious 3D, 360-degree and virtual-reality photos and videos. It will be available in mid-June for £25 from the London Stereoscopic Company, a concern backed by May (much to the bemusement of his accountant).

V(R) will rock you

May happily digresses on the history of stereoscopy stretching back to the innovations of Sir Charles Wheatstone in the Victorian age. Today, he says, with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive among the VR kit immersing people in three-dimensional virtual worlds, “We’ve come almost full circle. There’s no better way to experience 3D than the Victorian way.”

http://www.londonstereo.com/lsc_shop.html

Queen guitarist Brian May is an enthusiast for stereo imagery, the Victorian-era 3D craze for viewing photos through a stereoscope in order to be awed by the illusion of depth in static images. May’s put his money where his eyes are, operating the London Stereoscopic Company to promote the technology.

Now the shaggy-haired one has taken a step into virtual reality, adapting the Company’s OWL viewer to hold smartphones.

As the video below shows, May’s OWL Virtual Reality Kit looks an awful lot like a Google Cardboard, but done in plastic with better handles and without even a hint of a head strap. The device is claimed to work with any brand and model of smartphone, but behaves especially well when paired with an iPhone 6 Plus.

http://www.londonstereo.com/

Why Google Daydream matters — and how it could change virtual reality
Google could finally make mobile VR feel like more than a compromise
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/19/11713498/google-daydream-mobile-vr-virtual-reality-cardboard

Google will compete with its partners and sell its own Daydream virtual reality headsets
Think Nexus, but for VR.
http://www.recode.net/2016/5/19/11713830/google-daydream-vr-headsets-partners-

While focusing yesterday on its new virtual reality headset as a design that will be licensed to partners, Google also plans to sell a version of Daydream itself.

The Daydream headset is designed as an evolution of the low-end Cardboard, relying on a phone to provide the display, brains and head-tracking abilities. Unlike Cardboard, though, Daydream is designed to be far more comfortable so it can be used for longer periods of time.

A separate controller does have electronics, including a bunch of sensors, several buttons and a clickable trackpad.

VR head Clay Bavor confirmed Google will sell its version of the hardware.

The move is similar to what Google did with Cardboard, showing Google wants to make sure lots of these headsets get out. If other makers get enough devices out, great, but if not, Google wants to make sure lots of people have access to Daydream.

Google and partners like Epic Games and Unity focused a lot of their attention on the motion-sensing controller that accompanies the headset. Oculus, for example, has plans for a motion controller shipping later this year.

The headset and controller aren’t the only components for Daydream. Google is also certifying a range of phones as Daydream-ready.

Google is also working with video partners including Hulu, Netflix, IMAX, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball.

Unreal Engine adds full Google Daydream VR support, native Unity support coming this summer
http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/19/unreal-engine-adds-full-google-daydream-vr-support-native-unity-support-coming-this-summer/

ouTube for iOS has been updated today with Google Cardboard support, allowing for all videos to be watched in VR mode on iPhone. The functionality was previously limited to the YouTube app on Android smartphones since November 2015.

THIS IS
CARDBOARD.
ONLY PLASTIC
https://www.google.com/get/cardboard/plastic/
Google Cardboard Plastic combines everything you love about virtual reality headsets with everything you love about reality.

Virtual Reality (VR) Goggles: Built my own cell phone stereograph viewer with parts from my Lego optics lab.

1 Green baseplate 48 X 48 studs
1 Lego optics lab cell phone/iPod mount
2 Lego optics lab small lens holders
2 Magnifying lenses (I used two convex lenses from the computer projector I took apart)

It turns out that it is so easy to build a stereograph viewer that I really didn’t need the lens holders and could use a pair of dollar store reading glasses. The cardboard divider is optional if you have trouble relaxing your eyes like you would to view those 3D “Magic Eye” images.