TECH-TALK: GOOGLE I/O

Lots of exciting news coming from the Google I/O conference last week. Here's some of the highlights for all things VR...

NEW STANDALONE GOOGLE HEADSET

Google is working on a standalone VR headset that won't require either a phone or PC to run. It will offer 'positional' VR (where you can physically move around in the space) yet be cable-less and without the need for any external sensors, by utilising 'inside-out' tracking. No price or release date yet but a commercial version on its way "in the coming months". More here.

'SEURAT'

Seurat is something we're incredibly excited about here at Trojan. It's a new rendering technology from Google that makes high-end, film-quality 3D scenes possible on mobile devices. By being clever about how much of a scene that it renders, depending on the viewer's perspective, data and rendering requirements are massively reduced, allowing them to work on mobile devices. We'll be following this one with a keen interest... for now, check out the full article here.

CHAT ROOMS COMING TO YOUTUBE VR

"The virtual reality version of YouTube is adding shared rooms that will let people view 360-degree videos together, part of a larger update to Google’s Daydream VR platform. The new feature, coming later this year, offers what YouTube VR product lead Erin Teague calls a “co-watching experience.” That means that small groups of people can enter a viewing session, talking to each other via voice chat"... read the rest of the article here.

GOOGLE DAYDREAM TO GET NEW VR WEB BROWSER IN NEXT UPDATE

With a new standalone VR headset in the pipeline (where you don't need a phone or PC), Google are looking to update Daydream's operating system to make sure people don't need to leave the virtual world and take off their headset to access their phone's features or the internet more widely. Although this seems like a small step, it's part of a much bigger movement towards people spending more time in the virtual world (for good, or bad) - for anyone who's read 'Ready, Player, One', we know how this goes! More here.