Google’s virtual reality dreams are dead: Google Cardboard is no longer for sale

Google’s last surviving virtual reality product is dead. Today, the company has stopped selling the Google Cardboard VR viewer on the Google Store, the latest change in a long slowdown in Google’s once ambitious VR efforts. The Google Store message, which was first identified by the Android Police, said, “We are no longer selling Google Cardboard on the Google Store.”

Google Cardboard was a surprise success at Google I / O 2015 and moved the entry point to VR lower than anyone had previously imagined. The device was literally a piece of cardboard, in the shape of a virtual reality headset, with special plastic lenses. Google built a Cardboard app for Android and iOS, which would allow any high-end phone to power the headset. The landscape display divided into left and right views for your eyes, the phone’s hardware reproduced a virtual reality game and the accelerometers tracked the head in 3-DoF (degrees of freedom). There was even a cardboard action button on the device that would reinforce the touchscreen with a capacitive pad, so you could aim with your head and select options in an VR environment. Since the product was just cardboard and plastic lenses with no electronic device, Google sold the headset for just $ 20.

After the cardboard, Google started to increase its VR ambitions. In 2016, Google also released an enhanced version of Google Cardboard, the Google Daydream VR headset. It was a plastic and fabric version of a phone-powered virtual reality headset, with major improvements to a headband and small controller, for $ 80.

Then Google started to increase software support. VR support was also integrated with Android 7 Nougat in 2016, allowing Google to make improvements to the graphical pipeline for reducing latency in the main operating system. Google began certifying devices for enhanced “Daydream” support, featuring best hardware and software practices for VR. Android has a VR home screen and adds a special notification style so that apps can still alert you on the 3D VR interface. A VR version of the Play Store allows users to download the latest VR experiences in 3D. Support for virtual reality reached YouTube and Google Street View, and together with Mozilla, the Chrome team launched WebVR. Google’s best app was Tilt Brush, an excellent VR painting software.

In 2018, Google even convinced OEMs to make standalone Daydream VR hardware, so instead of being powered by a phone, Android and all the usual phone bits were integrated into a standalone VR headset. The first announced was the Lenovo Mirage Solo.

Google’s VR legacy

As in many other areas, Google was very enthusiastic about VR for a few years, and then the company quickly lost interest when it was not immediately successful. The VR shutdown began in 2019, when Google omitted Pixel 4’s Daydream support and eliminated the Daydream VR headset lineup. Google released a post-mortem RV statement saying there was resistance to using an RV phone, which cut access to all its applications, and that the company had not seen “the widespread consumer or developer adoption we expected”. It was also at this time that Google opened the code for the Cardboard project. VR support on Android was dropped from consumer phones with the launch of Android 11 in 2020, and Google ended the development of the Tilt Brush in January 2021, choosing to open the application code in Apache 2.0.

Google may have ended VR, but Android’s Cardboard and VR legacy is still alive. Android should still remain in VR for a long time, even if it is not officially sanctioned by Google. Oculus and Samsung originally teamed up on Gear VR, a sophisticated plastic virtual reality viewer that was powered by Samsung’s Android phone line. Although Samsung also shut down VR for phones, all Oculus standalone “Quest” VR headsets still run Android. Standalone VR headsets are always powered by ARM chips and other smartphone parts available on the market, so Android – however, forked or stripped you want to make it – will be one of the main options for powering this hardware adjacent to the smartphone. It already has all the hardware support and APIs you could possibly want, so why reinvent the wheel?

Three years after Cardboard, Nintendo took the idea of ​​a “cheap cardboard accessory” from Google and ran with it, creating Nintendo Labo products. Labo packaged the Nintendo Switch software with a load of pre-cut printed cardboard sheets, which could be assembled on all kinds of inexpensive peripherals, such as a cardboard piano or a robot suit. The Labo VR kit was an exact copy of the Google Cardboard: a cardboard VR headset used the Nintendo Switch as a screen, allowing you to see Nintendo’s worlds in 3D.

Google’s VR division has turned its attention (at least for a while) to AR instead of VR. Google’s ARCore framework allows developers to create augmented reality apps for Android and iOS, and the company regularly ships AR improvements on Android phones. With Apple reportedly working on an RV headset, however, you must ask yourself how long Google’s shifting product direction can stay away from VR.