Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation
What Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality developers are talking about
It was abundantly clear by earlier this year that Google’s interest in its Android-based Daydream VR platform had withered, but now the company has put the final nail in the coffin by discontinuing the Daydream View headset and confirming that its newest Pixel 4 smartphone isn’t compatible.
Google had monstrous ambitions for Daydream at the start. The company figured that developers would leap at the opportunity to build VR apps on its platform thanks to theoretical chance they could reach to hundreds of millions of existing Android users. But things didn’t turn out as they hoped. The company’s bet (which was in line with others at the time) that slotting smartphones into inexpensive VR viewers would be a great way to use VR just didn’t pan out.
As of Google I/O earlier this year, it was entirely clear that Google had lost faith in Daydream, but today they put the final nail in the coffin.
With minimal adoption after several years, Google today confirmed that it will stop selling its Daydream View headset, the company told Variety. While the company had been pretty good about maintaining Daydream compatibility with its own ‘Pixel’ smartphone line and a handful of other Android phones, the new Pixel 4 won’t support the Daydream View.
If you have a compatible phone, the Dayream store, apps, and headset will continue to function. Google told Variety:
There hasn’t been the broad consumer or developer adoption we had hoped, and we’ve seen decreasing usage over time of the Daydream View headset. So while we are no longer selling Daydream View or supporting Daydream on Pixel 4, the Daydream app and store will remain available for existing users.
We saw a lot of potential in smartphone VR—being able to use the smartphone you carry with you everywhere to power an immersive on-the-go experience. But over time we noticed some clear limitations constraining smartphone VR from being a viable long-term solution. Most notably, asking people to put their phone in a headset and lose access to the apps they use throughout the day causes immense friction.
Google’s first Daydream View headset launched at the end of 2016, and offered a reasonably good casual VR experience, but wasn’t quite as compelling as its nearest competitor, Gear VR. Google released an updated version of the View in 2017 which made some important improvements, but hasn’t done anything with the headset since.
Despite the low cost and wide accessibility of Daydream and even Gear VR, smartphone VR ultimately succumbed to a handful of pain points. Not only did the slot-in approach lack the full 6DOF experience of high-end headsets, putting your smartphone into a headset could be cumbersome, and using the headset also meant draining your precious smartphone battery and temporarily not having access to the phone itself, which has become an integral part of many people’s lives.
From the ashes of the slot-in smartphone viewers, standalone headsets like Oculus Quest bring many of the same benefits (and then some) while avoiding much of the friction of getting your smartphone involved. Granted, Lenovo launched a Daydream standalone headset, the Mirage Solo, in 2018 but its poor ergonomics and odd combination of a 3DOF controller with 6DOF headset failed to garner much attention.
The post Google Discontinues Daydream View Headset, the Final Nail in the Coffin for its Android VR Ambitions appeared first on Road to VR.
Despite impressive specifications Google’s new Pixel 4 phone doesn’t work with its Daydream VR platform. Google confirmed in a statement it is ending sales for its Daydream View which allowed you to slot in a series of Android-based phones and enjoy a simple 3DoF VR experience.
The lower budget Pixel 3a debuted earlier this year without support for the platform and we’ve seen a series of departures from Google of VR-focused researchers over the last few years. We reached out to Google for confirmation and received the following statement from a spokesperson over email:
We saw a lot of potential in smartphone VR—being able to use the smartphone you carry with you everywhere to power an immersive on-the-go experience. But over time we noticed some clear limitations constraining smartphone VR from being a viable long-term solution. Most notably, asking people to put their phone in a headset and lose access to the apps they use throughout the day causes immense friction.
There also hasn’t been the broad consumer or developer adoption we had hoped, and we’ve seen decreasing usage over time of the Daydream View headset. While we are no longer selling Daydream View or supporting Daydream on Pixel 4, the Daydream app and store will remain available for existing users.
We’re investing heavily in helpful AR experiences like Google Lens, AR walking navigation in Maps, and AR in Search that use the smartphone camera to bridge the digital and physical worlds, helping people do more with what they see and learn about the world around them.
Facebook held a eulogy for slot-in VR at its developer conference last month. Say goodbye, then, to the headaches of VR headsets which consume precious phone battery life and offer only three degrees of freedom to move around comfortably.
The post Google’s Daydream Over? Pixel 4 Not Supported, Viewer Sales End appeared first on UploadVR.
Google Arts & Culture partnered with Château de Versailles to create an extremely detailed VR tour of the iconic French palace, aptly named VersaillesVR – the palace is yours (2019).
The free app, which is now available on Steam with support for Rift, Vive, and Index, takes you through the centuries-old palace, letting you inspect and learn about the UNESCO World Heritage site’s many paintings, sculptures, furniture, as well as few of its gilded halls.
Built for King Louis XIV in the mid-1600s, the Palace of Versailles was the principal royal residence of France until the start of the French Revolution in 1789. And it certainly makes for an interesting historical juxtaposition: what was once only available to the elite is now free for anyone with a PC VR headset to enjoy. Liberté, égalité, fraternité—all that jazz—and no throngs of tourist groups to swim through either.
Inside the experience, which is only available for VR headsets, you can click on artifacts and learn more about them, getting a text explanation as well as a closer look at the discrete 3D models.
A handy map also lets you move around the palace and tour a few of the its storied halls, including the King and Queen’s state apartments, the Royal Opera House, the Royal Chapel (sculpted by Corneil Van Clève in the 18th century), and the iconic 73 meter-long Hall of Mirrors.
Built using photogrammetry, Google’s Arts & Culture team took 132,000 high-res photos from different angles, and then fed it all into their software to build a 3D model. Coming in at over 7 GB in size, the experience is amazingly detailed to say the least.
“What makes this experience unique is the size of the digitization we’ve undertaken here in Versailles,” Google Arts & Culture Lab’s Damien Henry says. “We’ve captured 24 rooms in 12 days. We were able to capture 7,000 square meters, and if we count the walls and roof, the total amount is 36,000 square meters.”
Granted, the physical palace measures more than 67,000 square meters of floor space, making the VR experience more of an aperitif that the creators hope will stimulate an appetite for an in-person visit.
The post Google Releases Highly-polished VR Tour of Versailles for Free appeared first on Road to VR.