Google is delivering a dedicated VR YouTube app in their newly announced Daydream platform. Along with it, the company is making sure to give users a few reasons to jump head first into the app when it launches by encouraging more established YouTubers to get into 360 video.
Please, Don’t Touch Anything (PDTA), a puzzle game from BulkyPix, has recently released a new VR adaptation of the year-old 2D title. Now built from the ground up in 3D for Oculus Rift and Gear VR headsets, PDTA offers the most immersive button-pushing simulator currently in VR. I wish I was making that up.
The Augmented World Expo, one of the longest running immersive technology events, is back for a 7th year and it’s bigger than ever. With focus on augmented reality, virtual reality and wearable technologies, the expo is packing in 4000 attendees, 200+ speakers and 200+ exhibitors to the Santa Clara Convention Center, California from June 1st.
At I/O 2016 this week, Google laid out its ambitious goals for Daydream, the company’s new platform for native, high performance virtual reality experiences on Android.
Candy Crush creator Tommy Palm has moved into making casual virtual reality games with Resolution Games. They’ve already released Bait! on the Gear VR, and it’s the first VR app to feature in-app purchases, and they just announced at Google I/O that they’re designing a launch title for Google’s Daydream mobile VR platform with a title called Wonderglade. I had a chance to catch up with Tommy about developing causal VR games that are interruptible, how they’re designing in natural breaks to not create games that are too addicting, thoughts on the future of free-to-play VR with in-app purchases, how VR games can be social without it being multi-player, developing a game with Daydream’s 3DOF controller, and how casual games may really start to blur the line between games and VR experiences.
LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST
Here’s some other videos and updates from Google I/O including a new GoogleVR YouTube channel and the @GoogleCardboard has been deprecated, and Google’s main Twitter VR account is now @GoogleVR.
Here’s some of the relevant GoogleVR talks from Google I/O over the past couple of days (with more coming soon to their GoogleVR YouTube channel.
VR at Google Keynote where Daydream Labs was announced.
Daydream Labs: Lessons Learned from VR Prototyping. This is an absolute must-watch talk by any VR designer since they condensed lessons that they got from rapidly prototyping 60 experiences in 30 weeks.
Daydream Labs: Drum Keyboard will revolutionize text input.
Monetization and Distribution on Daydream
Designing & Developing for the Daydream Controller – Google I/O 2016
VR Design Process – Google I/O 2016
Learn more about the Cloud Vision and Speech API – Google I/O 2016
This week Google announced Daydream, the company’s initiative for high-end mobile virtual reality. While Google didn’t reveal a dedicated dev kit, the company says developers can cobble together their own using the Nexus 6P smartphone, Cardboard, and a spare phone.
Starbreeze, the company behind the 210 degree FOV VR headset StarVR are to work with large-scale cinema specialists IMAX to create “premium location-based VR” experiences “worthy of the IMAX brand”.
Google Jump, a 360 camera system and processing software platform announced at last year’s Google I/O, is adding IMAX and Yi Technology to its roster of camera manufacturers.
When I loaded up Portal Stories: VR I was greeted with familiar sights and sounds from the Portal universe. A disembodied voice told that I was about to take part in an Aperture Science Virtual Reality Experiment, words I was absolutely thrilled to hear.
AltSpaceVR is the first cross-platform social VR application that supports both the Gear VR, Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive. Now that all of these VR headsets have had their consumer launch, then AltSpace VR has been one of the top places in VR to have social interactions.
I had chance to catch up with Bruce Wooden (aka “Cymatic Bruce”) at SVVR 2016 to talk about what types of events they’ve been holding, what types of emergent social behaviors he’s seeing, and how they’ve been teaching VR etiquette within their welcome spaces for new users. We also talk about some of the social dynamics that occur when they mix together the full range of interaction fidelity between hand-tracked Vive, Leap Motion hands in the Rift, and just the head rotation of the Gear VR. There is a bit of a power dynamic that emerges where people with tracked hands can be more expressive and have more attention and power in a conversation, and so we talk a bit about the implications of that including whether or not it makes Gear VR users feel more like consumers than creatives, producers, or equal participants.
Google have announced that developers itching to get started on building Android VR games using the Unity game engine can do so right now using a Daydream plugin.
Epic Games’ Kim Libreri today took to the stage at Google’s I/O conference to announce Unreal Engine support for the newly announced Daydream Android VR platform, what’s more is that it’s available right now.
Google announced it’s new initiative to make Android the choice for mobile virtual reality development with Daydream, their dedicated VR platform and ecosystem. Today, the Daydream theme continues as Google’s Clay Bavor share the company’s plans for Android virtual reality.
Google’s newly announced Daydream VR platform, an initiative that’s poised to bring low latency VR to a number of select Android smartphones later this fall, wasn’t exactly what the Internet was expecting when it heard about Google wanting to make its own VR headset. As soon as the platform was revealed, a few new sessions at Google I/O 2016 popped up that you won’t want to miss.
Announced today at Google I/O 2016, VR team lead Clay Bavor revealed on stage that the company will be partnering with manufacturers to build Google-approved VR headsets based on an internally generated reference design. To boot, Google is also providing their new VR ecosystem with a handy Wiimote-style motion controller.
