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Thursday, 26 June 2014 14:42

Virtual Reality Gets a Boost From Cardboard

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Although the concept of Virtual Reality (VR) is nothing new, there has always been something of a roadblock for this technology. That roadblock is money, if you do not have the money for the hardware and the programing APIs you are not going to develop for it. This is pretty much the fate of any technology that is stuck in the hands of a few large companies. Just look at 3D, we do not see 3D as more prevalent in gaming and movies because of cost.

So how do you combat this killer of dreams? Well you come up with a clever solution to reduce the expense of development for everyone involved. This is sort of what Google has done with their new project call Cardboard. No this is not a joke, instead it is a real push by Google to get VR technology into the hands of every developer on the planet without spending an arm and a leg.

The idea is simple, very simple: take a smartphone (running Android of course), put it in a cheap enclosure that can act as a headset and then give programing tools out for free. This could allow almost anyone to build a VR app and flood the Play Store with them. This new push makes Oculus VR’s original $90 price tag look like a fortune… Of course now that Oculus is owned by Facebook we do not expect them to maintain that price or to cozy up with just any developer. They are much more likely to push to larger developers or to develop for Facebook only which sot of kills the original idea behind Oculus, but that is the way things go.

Now with Cardboard, VR just might have a chance to become much more mainstream as there should be a lot more people developing for it. Google gets the biggest benefit from this as all of these new VR apps will be based on their mobile operating system (and that is just fine with them). Of course many will think of this as a joke and avoid the whole thing, but in the end this could be a good thing for Google, VR and yes the consumer.

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Read 2641 times Last modified on Thursday, 26 June 2014 15:00

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