- What is it? Google’s next mobile VR platform
- When is it out? Autumn 2016, along with, or shortly after Android Nougat releases
- What will it cost? Something comparable to the Gear VR
ORIGINALLY POSTED AT http://www.viarbox.com/2016/08/11/google-daydream-important-virtual-reality/.
At the Google I/O 2016 conference, Google revealed its ambitious plans to dominate the future of Virtual Reality market. It goes by the name Daydream. Fittingly enough, given its name, Google Daydream isn’t a physical stand-alone device as such. It’s a platform with a set of VR hardware standards for manufacturers to follow, which combine with a new piece of hub software from Google itself. Google says that Daydream is their way to offer high-quality mobile virtual reality to the world. It is Android-based and will support high-quality mobile virtual reality applications and services sold on the Google Play store and VR videos on YouTube.
Daydream’s apps will run only on new phones that have been certified by Google. In order to turn the Daydream platform into an industry standard, Google has partnered with a group of important brands.
Google confirmed Samsung, Alcatel, Asus, HTC, LG, Xiaomi and ZTE will produce phones that are “Daydream Ready.” In fact, the ZTE Axon 7 is the first smartphone announced to be Google Daydream compatible along with ZTE VR. It just needs Android Nougat and Google’s necessary VR maintenance software update to pull it off. Huawei, the notable Chinese phone maker with a growing global appeal, also stated it will be making Daydream-ready phones, headsets, and controllers. The company confirmed in an interview with Wall Street Journal that it has a Daydream-ready smartphone coming in the autumn, which could very well be an upgraded Nexus 6P or another device entirely.
Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Imax, MLB, NBA, CNN, The New York Times The Wall Street Journal, Ubisoft, and Electronic Arts will design apps and services for Daydream.
Google launched the Daydream site in order to help virtual reality developers get started before the first Daydream-ready phones start to roll out. The site offers Google VR SDKs that include everything needed to develop for these platforms, including libraries, API documentation, developer samples, and design guidelines.
Headset & controller
Daydream-ready headsets are designed for the high-quality mobile VR experiences that Daydream enables. Unlike the Google Cardboard viewer, they are designed for extended use. Instead of a trigger button, users interact with VR applications using the Daydream controller.
The Daydream controller was created with mobile VR in mind. Designed to be both accessible and expressive, it can track its rotation and orientation with high accuracy. It also includes a clickable touchpad and two buttons called APP and HOME. The APP button can be used by apps and the HOME button is reserved for system use.The remote operates similarly to a Wii Remote and allows players to move left — right, up — down, forward — backward. It is also a unique device that makes Daydream VR platform to stand apart from the Samsung Gear VR — the strongest rival of Google VR.
Developers can play around with The Controller Emulator UI which contains these elements:
- Connection indicator (top): This text indicates whether the emulator is connected to a headset phone. It also shows network information for the controller phone.
- Touchpad area (large circle): This area emulates the touchpad area of a controller. It does not support multi-touch.
- Touchpad click emulation: On the real controller, the touchpad can be clicked by pressing down on it. This is considered to be a button, and is called the “click button”. Clicking the touchpad on a physical controller is emulated by double-tapping the touchpad in the Controller Emulator and will send Click button events to the app.
- App button (immediately below touchpad): This button sends App button events to the app.
- Home button (bottom): This button is reserved for system use and cannot be used by your app. It is also used to recenter the controller.
The behavior of the touchpad, Click button, and App button are up to the developer to decide. Google suggest that the click should map to your application’s primary action (e.g. selecting, shooting) and the app button should be used for secondary actions (e.g. menu, pause, tool selection).
Android Nougat
The new version of Google’s mobile operating system Android Nougat comes with a mode that gives VR apps a priority access to the CPU and GPU of the phone for a low-latency VR experience. It is the key element to the whole Daydream project, as Google says this new feature will bring down latency on a Nexus 6P with Cardboard from 100ms to under 20ms and thus providing a far more immersive experience.
Why Google Daydream matters? Mobile VR
By 2016, there are 2 billion smartphone users around the world — twice the number of people who have access to PCs. According to Statista, by 2019 this number is expected to increase to 2.6 billion. Smartphones can be a powerful tool to make VR content and services accessible to billions of people around the world.
And mobile VR has unique advantages, like the fact that you’ll never get tangled in wires and that far more people own high-end phones than high-end desktop computers. There’s still a huge gap in the market for a device that, instead of vainly trying to compete with high-end headsets, leans into the potential advantages of mobile VR by being portable, accessible, and approachable. To succeed, Daydream doesn’t have to be more technically advanced than the Gear VR, just more convenient.
Daydream is intended to improve the VR experience on Android phones, and make VR apps and VR video content more accessible to more people. Google Daydream won’t just provide yet another VR platform in an increasingly fragmented market. That’s not the point. Rather, the intention is that it will pull together all of the content that already exists in some form on the internet. The hardware side of things includes a set of guidelines for a VR headset and a motion controller, both of which Google has said it will also manufacture at some point in the future. In the end, this will create a nice VR ecosystem for Google around their operating system Android.
A couple of possibilities for businesses
With Daydream, Android users will connect a headset to their mobile devices that allows them to interact with games and other apps. Through Daydream Home, consumers will be able to access Netflix, Hulu, and IMAX, as well as games from EA and Ubisoft, among others. Once the technology is in widespread use, brands will discover how to connect with customers using VR. There are many opportunities for brands to take advantage of VR for their product development and marketing efforts. Here are a few ways you may be implementing Daydream in your business several months from now.
- Show off your prototype: Having a product on hand to show can make a big difference, but a new business usually lacks the resources necessary to initiate manufacturing, even for one item. With VR, brands can already create a software-based prototype that can be refined as they go. If a prospect requests a change, the prototype can be easily tweaked and returned to the prospect for consideration.
- Make a shopping experience: Brick-and-mortar shopping allows customers to try out different products before making a purchase. This is especially important for high-dollar items like electronics and vehicles. VR would give online shoppers the opportunity to interact with products in a similar manner, simulating the in-person experience in a way traditional online shopping can’t.
- Tell your band’s story: Some of the best examples of marketing through VR are brand experiences. These marketing campaigns are built by focusing on giving the customer a fun experience, putting the ad message secondary to that. That will bring customers back for repeat demonstrations, as well as increase the chance that they’ll recommend it to friends.
Virtual reality is an exciting new technology that will likely gather attention from numerous consumers in the coming months. By finding a way to create brand experiences and marketing messages using the technology, businesses can connect with customers in a way they haven’t previously. The earlier brands can become involved in VR, the better since over time the marketplace is likely to become as crowded as many other platforms have.
Until Google’s Daydream get widely adopted, ViarBox Cardboard is the optimal way to run scalable virtual reality campaigns.
CONCLUSION
Could virtual reality become a Google experiment that doesn’t end up becoming a money pit? The company hopes to emulate the Android business model by selling content through its Play store. In-app purchases could be an additional revenue stream, not to mention advertising, where Google has earned billions of dollars. Google is the master at creating ecosystems and Daydream seem to be their play to create one for virtual reality. Until than ViarBox Cardboard is here for you.
PS: Can’t wait to start developing Daydream apps? You can create your own developer kit to get started right away. For more information, see Google’s page on how to set up a Daydream Development Kit.
