Google has always emerged a leader no matter what it has tried its hands on. The Google VR Technology is no exception to this rule. It is a great improvement on the usual 3D images that are mostly used by travel apps or the tours and travel companies as their desktop wallpapers (usually the turtle diving under water) or the 3D images that are used by realtors to show a better view of the property and similar other examples of 3D images and primitive virtual reality.
The Current Trend
The ongoing trend in virtual reality (VR) which is also usually known as computer-simulated or virtual reality as well as immersive multimedia includes the computer technology that mostly replicates the real or imagined environment and simulates the user’s environment or their physical presence that helps the users in better interaction. Since not much has been done in this regard hence there was a scope for a lot of improvement especially on the android and iOS VR gaming platform. Google has understood this need of advanced VR technology for mobile platforms and has thus developed Google VR Technology.
The technology improves on the existing trend and tries to improve on the reality portion by ensuring the experience matches the real, life like one. Thus tour companies can give a real view of their destinations and real estate agents can give a life like tour of the properties that they want to sell. This ensures more realistic long distance communication as well as gives a lot of rich stuff to be put on their apps and websites. Google has thus introduced its VR view which makes it quick and easy to include indulging content on the web as well as on Android and iOS.
Features of Google VR Technology
Google VR has tried to create the future of virtual reality by including some exciting features that help users experience much better and life-like experience through the mobile as well web medium.
VR Views: One of the most exciting and currently selling features by Google is VR view. This feature creates 360 degree VR images as well as videos which helps them in transforming the images into highly indulging and interactive experiences. The users can view them on their desktop computers as well as their phone with the help of a Cardboard viewer. Here are some features of VR views:
- VR views is helpful in a variety of fields including news, entertainment, travel and real estate and they help the users in sharing their story quickly and easily. The feature is helpful in building highly immersive as well as engaging visual experiences and in sharing your story with your users that can be created by you.
- If you want to create an exciting native app, the user can embed VR view in it simply by grabbing the latest Cardboard SDK which is available for Android or iOS. The user can also do this by adding a few lines of code.
- It is also useful on the web where you can embed a VR view in an extremely simple manner similar to adding an iframe on the site. Google is also open-sourcing the JavaScript and HTML to help the web developers self host or even modify according to their needs and it is available through github.
Below is the code to embed Google VR View image which we used at the start of the article.
<iframe width="100%"
height="300px"
allowfullscreen
frameborder="0"
src="//storage.googleapis.com/vrview/index.html?image=//storage.googleapis.com/vrview/examples/coral.jpg&
is_stereo=true">
</iframe>
The best part about VR view is that it is simple to embed and brings great results. The helpful features include the 360-degrees as well as the facility to embed highly immersive content into the apps as well as websites on the Google Developers Blog. But for all this the chrome browser is a must.
Device Compatibility
Currently Google VR View is compatible and works on below browsers both on desktop & mobile.
Web
- Chrome on Windows, OSX, Linux, Android, and iOS.
- Safari on OSX and iOS.
- Firefox on Windows, OSX, and Linux.
- IE 11 and Edge on Windows.
Native
- iOS 8 and higher.
- Android 4.4 (Kit Kat) and higher.
Note – 360 videos do not work in a browser on iOS.
Tip – In Android you can use Google “Cardboard Camera” app to take 360 degrees panoramic photos.
Host VR View on Website
As a user you can also host VR view on your domain. The hosting task is not that difficult. All you need to have download Google’s VR View from GitHub and host it on public access. If you keep it under “VRView” folder on your server then you can access it at //yourdomain.com/vrview/?image=examples/coral.jpg&is_stereo=true. You can add images on server and needs to change URL manually to see the VRView of that image.
The future: Apart from the VR view that has been launched to enable developers to embed immersive content on the web, Android and iOS and enables the users to view everything on their phone with the help of a Cardboard viewer and even on the desktop computer with a Chrome browser, Google is planning to develop many innovative features that will define the future in virtual reality.
Google has been constantly working on improving this technology and is also going to add new features that will help in bringing everything from the web to VR. The team has been working towards better WebVR support to help the web developers in a massive way in embedding VR content into their web pages. For the developers, it means they can use Cardboard- or Daydream-ready VR viewers and can, while browsing the web (through Google chrome), see the pages with compliant VR content.
Thus there is much more to be experienced in VR and computer simulated technology as promised by the Google Chromium team and this will definitely redefine the web as well as mobile apps experience through much more addictive virtual reality.
