Clay Bavor showed Google Cardboard’s progress after one year at the IO 2015 conference for developers. The idea behind Cardboard was worldwide access to virtual reality. Using a piece of folded cardboard, some lenses, and a rubber band a smartphone can be transformed into a VR viewer. Hundreds of apps now reside on the Play store compatible with Cardboard, and more than one million cardboard viewers exist in the world.
The 2015 design fits screens up to six inches, because “phones got a lot bigger over the last year.” The magnet button is now made of cardboard and works with every phone. Assembly takes three steps instead of the previous twelve steps required to build a unit. The software development kit now works with both iOS and Android.
Images courtesy Google Cardboard
Next was the announcement of Expeditions. Teachers can now take their students on virtual field trips. A classroom set of cardboard viewers along with a teacher tablet are synchronized so the students can explore different worlds.
The final innovation was Jump, a custom camera rig to capture three hundred and sixty degrees of data and stitch the files together to create VR video. The camera rig is built to hold sixteen camera modules in a circular pattern, and has been tested in 3d printed plastic, metal and cardboard. GoPro is developing a Jump-ready three hundred sixty degree camera array.
The Assembler takes the sixteen signals and creates stereoscopic VR video. Raw camera data is first combined for a rough alignment, and then global color correction further combines the images. 3d Alignment compensates for different object depths to interpolate between different viewpoints and finalize the VR world.
I’m a year late to the Google Cardboard party but after watching the video am definitely building a viewer of my own. The engineering, programming and design that’s gone into Cardboard, Expeditions and Jump is amazing. The inspiration comes from not just the technology that’s developed but the company’s insistence that the technology and the data should be available to everyone. Educators can apply to help pilot Expeditions here.