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

Google’s last surviving VR product is dead. Today, the company stopped selling the Google Cardboard VR viewer in the Google Store, the latest step in a long shutdown of Google’s once ambitious VR efforts. The message in the Google Store, first noticed by Android Police, reads: “We are no longer selling Google Cardboard in the Google Store.”

Google Cardboard was a surprise hit on Google I / O 2015 and has the access point for VR lower than anyone previously thought. The device was a literal piece of cardboard, shaped like a VR headset, with special plastic lenses. Google has built a Cardboard app for Android and iOS, allowing any suitable phone to make the headphones work. The landscape display split in your left and right views, the phone hardware delivered a VR game and the accelerometers watched 3-DoF (degrees of freedom) head on. There was even a cardboard action button on the handset that would move the touchscreen with a capacitive cushion so you could aim with your head and choose options in a VR environment. Since the product was just cardboard and plastic lenses without any electronics, Google sold the headset for only $ 20.

After cardboard, Google began to scale up its VR ambitions. In 2016, Google also introduced an upgraded version of Google Cardboard, the Google Daydream VR headset. It was a plastic and cloth version of a phone-powered VR headset, with the major improvements of a headband and a small controller, for $ 80.

Then Google started providing software support. VR support was also built into Android 7 Nougat in 2016, enabling Google to improve core pipeline core management improvements. Google has begun certifying devices for enhanced “Daydream” support, using best-in-class hardware and software practices for VR. Android has got a VR home screen and added a special notification style so apps can still alert you in the 3D VR interface. With a VR version of the Play Store, users can download the latest VR experiences in 3D. VR support got YouTube and Google Street View, and along with Mozilla, the Chrome team launched WebVR. Google’s best app was Tilt Brush, a killer piece for VR paint software.

In 2018, Google even manufactured OEMs to make standalone Daydream VR hardware, so instead of being powered by a phone, Android and all the usual bits and pieces were integrated into a standalone VR headset. The first one 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, after which the company quickly lost interest when it could not see immediate success. The VR shutdown began in 2019 when Google dropped Daydream support from the Pixel 4 and killed the Daydream VR headset line. Google issued a VR post-mortem statement saying there was resistance to using a VR phone, which breaks access to all your apps, and that the company has not seen ‘the big consumer or developer adoption we were hoping for. do not have’. It was also around this time that Google opened the Cardboard project. VR support in Android was removed from consumer phones with the release of Android 11 in 2020, and Google stopped choosing the Tilt Brush development in January 2021, preferring to open the app under Apache 2.0.

Google may have stopped VR, but the VR legacy of Cardboard and Android lives on. Android should stay in VR for a long time, even if it is not officially approved by Google. Oculus and Samsung originally teamed up with the Gear VR, a flashy, plastic VR viewer powered by Samsung’s Android phone line. While Samsung has also discontinued the phone VR, all of Oculus’ standalone “Quest” VR headsets are still running Android. Freestanding VR headsets are always powered by off-the-shelf ARM chips and other smartphone components, so Android, but whatever you want to make or strip off, would be an excellent choice to attach this hardware that adheres to smartphones drive. It has all the hardware support and APIs you want, so why should you reinvent the wheel?

Three years after Cardboard, Nintendo took the idea of ​​’cheap cardboard accessory’ from Google and ran with it, creating the Nintendo Labo products. Labo packs Nintendo Switch software with a load of pre-cut, printed cardboard sheets, which can be assembled into all sorts of cheap peripherals such as a cardboard keyboard or a robot suit. The Labo VR Kit was an exact Google Cardboard copy: a cardboard VR headset uses the Nintendo Switch as the screen so you can see Nintendo’s worlds in 3D.

Google’s VR division is focusing its attention (at least for a while) on AR instead of VR. With Google’s ARCore framework, developers can create augmented reality apps for Android and iOS, and the company regularly sends AR enhancements to Android phones. While Apple apparently works on a VR headset, however, you have to wonder how long Google’s fickle product direction will be able to stay away from VR.