Announced during the second day of Google’s annual I/O developer event, Daydream VR will soon have access to the Android Chrome web browser. Because of Chrome’s official support for WebVR, this means that users will be able to navigate their way to their next VR-optimised web experience without having to remove the headset.
Over the last 12 months or so we’ve been keeping an eye on Google’s aggressive hiring for its AR/VR team which, among other things, suggested that the company was working on new “mass production” hardware that would go beyond the simple smartphone snap-in Daydream headsets. This week we learned that there was indeed something to all that hiring, as Google has announced new ‘standalone’ headsets coming to the Daydream platform, fully self-contained VR devices, the first of which will come from HTC and Lenovo. Until those headsets launch later this year, Road to VR was among a select group that got to see one of Google’s early Daydream standalone prototypes.
During Day 2 of Google I/O 2017, following major announcements of support for standalone VR headsets and a ‘2.0’ release of the Daydream software platform, Mike Jazayeri, Director of Product Management for Daydream, stated that “tens of millions” of Daydream-Ready devices are expected in the market by the end of the year.
Daydream-compatible standalone headsets are coming, revealed on stage at Google I/O yesterday, but the big question remains: how much is one of these inside-out positional tracking headsets going to cost? Google tells that although prices are dependent on the individual manufacturers, they expect it to cost about as much as a PC VR headset like Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.
At today’s annual Google I/O developer conference, Clay Bavor, VP of Virtual Reality at Google, announced a new augmented reality service called Visual Positioning Service, the latest development for the Tango platform that promises to not only precisely map the world around you in concert with Google Maps, but also give you a ‘GPS-like’ turn-by-turn navigational experience when you’re indoors. In addition, he announced an AR mode for an upcoming educational tool called Google Expeditions.
Google today announced that standalone VR headsets are coming to Daydream, the first of which will be made by HTC and Lenovo. Supporting these new devices is an inside-out positional tracking system that the company is calling ‘WorldSense’, which “dramatically” improves tracking over previous Daydream devices.
Google and HTC are partnering up on Google’s new standalone Daydream VR initiative which will see fully-self contained mobile VR headsets built on Android. HTC is bringing its Vive brand to Daydream, today announcing that the company will build a mobile VR headset for the Daydream platform.
Google I/O has begun, the company’s annual developer conference, and amidst expectations of a new all-in-one VR headset, the company announced that Samsung’s Galaxy S8/S8 plus and LG’s next flagship phone will be officially receiving Google Daydream support.
On stage at the company’s Google I/O 2017 developer conference today, the company announced that it is building standalone Daydream VR headsets. The first partners work with the company to bring such headsets to market is HTC and Lenovo.
Cory Doctorow’s new sci-fi book “Walkaway” is a optimistic disaster novel that imagines what society might look like if people walked away from competitive market-driven laws, norms, and technological infrastructure and into an open-source inspired, collaborative gift economy. He’s a co-founder of Boing Boing, and he uses the daily transom of tech culture and innovation as inspiration for world building fodder for his potential utopian futures. Privacy is also a recurring theme as the cyberpunks of the future have a number of different tactics for going dark and protecting their private data from being exploited.
Oculus’ new developer hub website is up and running, featuring better navigation, documentation and search capabilities. The improvements address many of the requests and feedback received from the recent global developer survey, and follows an initiative to increase overall support for the developer community.
On May 16, the Bandai Namco-backed VR studio ‘Project i Can‘ announced a new project called Evangelion VR: The Throne of Souls where you can maneuver an Eva, just like in the classic mech anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995).
In August of last year, Valve created the SteamVR licensing program to allow any developer to create their very own SteamVR tracked object. At that time, Valve partnered with Synapse, a Seattle-area product development firm, to provide a mandatory training program for all SteamVR licensees. Road to VR met with Synapse’s electrical engineering program lead and SteamVR Tracking instructor, Doug Bruey, to talk about the tracking system and how it will be used by companies in the future.
First-person real-time strategy VR game Cosmic Trip will leave Early Access on May 24th. Developer Funktronic Labs is readying the ‘fully-featured’ RTS mode for the v1.0 launch, along with a digital Deluxe Edition which adds an artbook and soundtrack.
