Google and Mattel are holding a press event today to announce a new product that merges Google’s experimental Cardboard virtual reality platform with Mattel’s classic View-Master toy. Also announced at the event: Mattel plans to bring the new View-Master toy and with it Google’s Cardboard platform to the iPhone by the end of the year.
First announced in June of last year, the Cardboard platform utilizes an inexpensive VR headset constructed from cardboard to provide a virtual reality-like experience for Android apps. While the platform has been Android-only up until now, Mattel announced today that its new View-Master based on the Cardboard platform will come to other mobile devices such as iOS. It’s unclear if Google too will open up its own Cardboard hardware to iPhone users, but it appears it will at least let its hardware partners building VR headsets for the platform do so.
Mattel said it planned to have an iOS version by Christmas and that it had no plans to use any other platform besides Cardboard but Google, who wants to sell Android devices, would not announce an iOS version of Cardboard today. However by the above transitive property they effectively have with this Mattel launch.
There have, however, been DIY solutions for getting Google Cardboard up and running on iPhones using virtual reality iOS apps that are already for the most part compatible with the platform.
We have full coverage live from the event over on our sister site 9to5Google.
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Or you could go outside and get a dose of real reality. Say the beach, or the mountains…
Or you could not because you don’t live even remotely close to either. Virtual reality (if you have any imagination at all) has profound, and endless applications. Granted, as of now it can do very little, but it’s not hard to imagine different, insanely amazing things it could do.
An idea I have is a virtual reality tour of any national parks. Nothing replaces going and seeing the beautiful parks in reality, but the actual reality is, 99.9% of people will never get to experience any given park in real life. Ergo it would be phenomenal to allot people the ability to experience them through virtual reality. I also imagine a time when you have a device or room which can project lifelike environments all around you…anything you can imagine, or desire. For example, a moonlit night at a lake, if you could just transform your room into this virtually, it would be amazing.
Or just imagin, if the resolution is enough, this technique will destroy the whole display and tv industry, nobody will need them. you want a 200 inch tv? here is it, you want 3 30 inch curved displays in front of you, it is there already!!!
I tried oculus vr, it is realy amazing, the only problem is the low resolution, but this shouldn’t be a problem in near future, think of the 3d accelerate card, how long it takes from voodoo to current gen?
The Google Cardboard hardware /is/ already open to iOS users – it’s completely open to anyone. You can download the design from https://www.google.com/get/cardboard/, and print it on paper, stick it to card and cut it out yourself. The tricky bit is you need to purchase acrylic lenses and a few other parts. Google give you the full specs so you can source your own, but after you add it all up, it comes to around £15. It just so happens I was looking into this last week, and I realised that the standard Cardboard isn’t big enough for large phones like the iPhone 6+ which I have. Fortunately, Google have also made mass-manufacturing specs available, and so some third parties sell Cardboard half-assembled with all the parts – you just fold it up and press the sticky bits together. Takes less than one minute.
For reference (and for UK users seeking one that’s compatible with the 6+) the kit I used was this one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00S7R0UIA . But there are others that should be virtually identical, and just as good.
The rest of Google Cardboard is just an app, and similar apps have been written for iOS. The official Google Cardboard app hasn’t been ported (yet?) but there are several on the App Store that do similar things… just search for “google cardboard” or “sbs 3d” (side-by-side 3d, the technology it uses, just like the original view-master but with more interactivity).
Cardboard is only a toy, a novelty for parties and showing off to friends, and it won’t last forever. But it genuinely works, and surprisingly well. The effect is seriously immersive – it makes me even more hungry for the Oculus Rift retail version!
VR headsets (toys) are not new: Hasbro has released similar 3D goggles for iPhone/iPod 5 years ago… http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2382956,00.asp