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So a slightly more production-ready version of cardboard, but requires a specific phone that not one customer has yet. When do we stop buying into the Google p

• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• Kiro 10y ago
  > but it's honestly baffling to me how these threads aren't peppered with what I would think to be well-justified skepticism Are we visiting the same site? I see nothing but negativity in threads about Google.
  • brazzledazzle 10y ago
    I thought it was a rule on HN that every thread about Google must have at least one complaint about reader.
• suyash 10y ago
  Very well written criticism. I agree with most points you made specially the fact that if google wants VR to go main stream and really cares about users it should have put more emphasis in Cardboard which works for all phones including iPhone. Putting more emphasis on proprietary headset and phone shows only one reason behind this move - they want to make $$ selling Phones and VR headsets.
• beaner 10y ago
  Dude. It's a $79 strap that puts your phone in front of your face. It's a cool toy. They're obviously not trying to compete with Oculus with this. What are you ranting on about?
  • Ph0X 10y ago
    And in a lot of places, it'll come for free with the phone. I know Fi is doing it, and I think Verizon might too. I know friends that got Gear VR for free along with their Samsung phones.
    • jsight 10y ago
      Do they use it?
      • markatkinson 10y ago
        I imagine the novelty wears off pretty fast, but the wow factor for first time users is pretty awesome. I would say just taking it to work/friends and sharing that experience makes it more worthwhile and also aids the VR cause! :)
      • 72deluxe 10y ago
        A valid question. I used cardboard once. I stopped using it as I got dizzy, and secondly my wife took a photo of me whilst I was using it and it became obvious that I looked completely ridiculous. At least with other game forms and controllers (eg xbox/playstation/even Nintendo chuck) you don't look completely ridiculous using them.
• tschellenbach 10y ago
  Chromecast is pretty amazing
  • serge2k 10y ago
    I dumped mine as soon as I tried the fire TV stick.
• wrsh07 10y ago
  1) A new product standard that will be supported by all upcoming flagship Android phones. Your criticism is that they're announcing something ... new? 2) Providing a cheap VR experience for everyone seems pretty reasonable. It fills out the price/performance curve between Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR, and probably doesn't suck. Finally, since it's so cheap, they can literally give it away to all Pixel pre-orders. Also, they're building on a VR platform established by Cardboard. While Cardboard was an obviously cheap experience, it was also a 20% project / experiment that I'm glad they released. Why not enable your developers to build fun / cheap experiences?
• _pius 10y ago
  So sure, let's all pretend that wearing a pair of underwear on your face stuffed with a cell phone is going to advance VR. Yeah. That seems totally plausible. Your comment is not going to age well.
  • 1_2__3 10y ago
    Shall we come back in a year and see how it did? Tell you what, let's try this. In a year (let's say next 10/1/17, easy to remember) we'll start a timer. How long to do you think that timer will run before Google makes a single press release, blog post, software update or even any other mention of Daydream? That is, after one year, what do you think their commitment to Daydream will be, measured by even a whisper of talk about it, or any evidence at all it hasn't been wholly abandoned? I'm willing to bet that timer runs forever.
    • _pius 10y ago
      Happy to take that bet.
    • jiaweihli 10y ago
      Considering Daydream is effectively the next iteration of Cardboard, I'm also happy to take that bet.
    • SapphireSun 10y ago
      How much is buy in to the pool?
• gfodor 10y ago
  i have a feeling you are going to come to regret this comment. google has made the right move here. they've introduced VR capabilities to the android platform in a way that, unlike cardboard, will set a baseline good experience for users (performance, frame rate, thermal, etc.) they've introduced a low price point, casual piece of hardware that will get good VR into as many consumers' hands as possible. the have made it so 3rd party vendors can compete in the ecosystem. they are providing an open platform for building and distributing VR software. they have included a controller peripheral as part of the standard which radically increases the surface area of applications. basically, to me this is the path that seems the most likely vector for mass market VR adoption. the high end PC VR is too expensive in 2016, and the console based VR, while definitely compelling, still has at least one order of magnitude less addressable market. iterating from here to more standalone devices like those shared already by qualcomm is an obvious transition on this platform and I'd imagine most VR devices sold in 2017-2018 will be portable standalone HMDs running android.
  • Ph0X 10y ago
    Yeah, and unlike gaming VR, I think mobile VR has the potential to truly catch on and spread. It's cheap (80$ vs. 600$+), it's easy to use (no wires or crazy rig needed), and you can use it anywhere (lay on the bed, use outside).
    • 1_2__3 10y ago
      Well, no. As of today it's $685 + $80. In the future if you either already have the phone or if the magical "partners who have signed up" start delivering Daydream-capable phones then it's only $80. And I'm not trying to be pedantic - if this was, say, supported on many phones then I'd agree with you. But your argument is essentially that a product only useable on an itty bitty tiny fraction (well, okay, today nobody) of the cell phone market is going to push VR into the home. That seems highly unlikely to me.
      • jiaweihli 10y ago
        Other manufacturers are likely all scrambling to catch the VR train so they aren't left behind. I expect all top-end phones to support VR within the next 2 years, if not 1 year. So within that time the cost will fall down to $80.
• pixelbath 10y ago
  I'd say the GearVR is the more production-ready version of Cardboard, but requires a specific phone that only a segment of customers have. I own a GearVR and S7, and Daydream seems very similar to that hardware while addressing a few of the out-of-the-box issues that GearVR has: 1. GearVR has no controller. Daydream's controller provides both direct and motion input. 2. GearVR has decent resolution with the S7. Phone resolutions should only improve over time, and so will the experience (particularly the screen-door effect). 3. The GearVR hardware is hard plastic and a little uncomfortable after 30-45 minutes. This headset seems to go to some length to avoid that problem. 4. From what I understand, the GearVR has high-resolution sensors inside of it to offload some of that processing from the phone. This has the effect of tightly coupling the GearVR hardware to Samsung, since they're the only ones making compatible hardware (to my knowledge). Daydream is more of a reference, so there will soon be more compatible phones out there. 5. Publishing apps to GearVR requires going through Oculus (Facebook), period. On the S7, plugging into the GearVR is actually a hard shortcut to Oculus. You may not agree that Google is better, but I doubt it's going to be as walled-in.
  • sayangel 10y ago
    i think points 4 and 5 are massive ones that people aren't seeing past. The GearVR was better than cardboard because of the improved IMU + scheduling preemption. These are things people always glaze over because they're obviously too technical for consumers to care about. Now Google is setting a standard and while before there was no reason for VR ready IMUs in phones, now phones will have the proper heardware and Anrdoid N low latency mode to hopefully make them as capable as an S7+GearVR out of the box. This integration is a massive step in the right direction. It's VR pushing manufacturers to reconsider what the "basic" phone looks like.
• taneq 10y ago
  Basically yeah, it looks like Cardboard was their prototype / tech demo, and this is their "ok that worked, let's make it into a product" version.
• kriro 10y ago
  I don't think Google has been bad when it comes to hardware. They are not a hardware company but they try to do interesting things. They were way ahead of the curve with Glass which was technically solid for the time but marketed horribly. They were the first to nudge VR towards mobile/mass adoption with cardboard...an idea that quite frankly I don't think many companies would even think about trying. I think they have good teams for both AR and VR in place and they are committed to both. With AR they are probably back to wait and see but I doubt they are not thinking about/working on a Glass followup. This VR google is a direct iteration on cardboard. I think their message is pretty clearly "we think people have cell phones and they ought to be good enough for first gen VR experiences". There's plenty of non-hardware issues to work on when it comes to VR so I sympathize with the position (I did preorder the Sony VR which should arrive soon as I think that's a potential hardware sweetspot). Pixel I know nothing about and have no opinion about but they have been tremendously helpful in getting better cell phones into our hands from the software side by working on Android. I actually think the modern Android experience is quite a bit nicer than the modern iPhone experience. I think it's a bit silly to expect a (software) company to have spectacular launch after spectacular launch. Those aren't easy things, failure is the most likely outcome. Google does seem to be invested in the right spaces and certainly seems to have smart people working for them. Edit: And obviously it's a great prototyping tool if it'll be supported by the major engines. I'll gladly take a more comfortable cardboard to quickly prototype some VR ideas. As a bonus I get it on less powerful hardware so I have a good "worst case"
• aphextron 10y ago
  We need to get past the idea of strapping a phone to your face as "VR". It's not. It's a neat toy that is interesting for a few hours, and that's it. The bare minimum for VR is what Valve has achieved with the Vive: full 6 degree of freedom tracking with tracked hand controls. Anything less is a toy and a distraction that is poisoning the well of public perception.