Google's smartphone-based Daydream VR gets support from top Android manufacturers
Google's forthcoming Daydream platform for virtual reality has support from Android device makers including Samsung, HTC, LG, and Huawei, though the hardware is predicted to only be "slightly better" than Samsung's own Gear VR.
Analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray views Google Daydream as one more stop on a long --?and he believes inevitable --?road toward advanced virtual reality and mixed reality devices becoming commonplace. The platform was announced earlier this week at the I/O 2016 conference.
In a note to investors on Friday, Munster noted that the aforementioned companies -- along with Asus, Alcatel, and Mi -- are all signed on to build Daydream-compatible hardware. Google's VR platform has specific hardware requirements for phones, mandating high-resolution displays and high-performance sensors with fast response times in order to qualify as compatible hardware.
In addition to phone requirements, "Daydream Ready" VR phones will also be compatible with dedicated controllers, giving users a way to interact with content in virtual worlds.
At launch, Google expects DayDream will have supporting content from its own services like YouTube, Street View, Google Photos, and Google Play Movies. Third-party support is expected from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CNN, HBO, Netflix, the NBA, MLB, Hulu, Lionsgate, and IMAX.
Samsung already sells a Gear VR headset that works with certain Galaxy phones for a basic VR experience. With more stringent hardware requirements and dedicated controllers, Munster believes Google Daydream will offer a "slightly better" experience that will help introduce virtual reality to the masses.
"It also differentiates Android from Apple and introduces a feature set that could give people a reason to switch from an iPhone," Munster said.
Analyst Gene Munster has previously indicated he believes Apple will begin working with third-party manufacturers to enable iPhone-powered VR headsets within the next two years. He predicts Apple will expand its "Made for iPhone" program to include VR capabilities.
Munster is perhaps best known among technology enthusiasts as a longtime proponent of Apple building a full-fledged television set. He finally abandoned those hopes last year, telling investors he no longer believed Apple would sell its own HDTV.
Now he has focused his longterm attention on VR and mixed reality, as well as rumors of an Apple-built car.
Analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray views Google Daydream as one more stop on a long --?and he believes inevitable --?road toward advanced virtual reality and mixed reality devices becoming commonplace. The platform was announced earlier this week at the I/O 2016 conference.
In a note to investors on Friday, Munster noted that the aforementioned companies -- along with Asus, Alcatel, and Mi -- are all signed on to build Daydream-compatible hardware. Google's VR platform has specific hardware requirements for phones, mandating high-resolution displays and high-performance sensors with fast response times in order to qualify as compatible hardware.
In addition to phone requirements, "Daydream Ready" VR phones will also be compatible with dedicated controllers, giving users a way to interact with content in virtual worlds.
At launch, Google expects DayDream will have supporting content from its own services like YouTube, Street View, Google Photos, and Google Play Movies. Third-party support is expected from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CNN, HBO, Netflix, the NBA, MLB, Hulu, Lionsgate, and IMAX.
Samsung already sells a Gear VR headset that works with certain Galaxy phones for a basic VR experience. With more stringent hardware requirements and dedicated controllers, Munster believes Google Daydream will offer a "slightly better" experience that will help introduce virtual reality to the masses.
"It also differentiates Android from Apple and introduces a feature set that could give people a reason to switch from an iPhone," Munster said.
Analyst Gene Munster has previously indicated he believes Apple will begin working with third-party manufacturers to enable iPhone-powered VR headsets within the next two years. He predicts Apple will expand its "Made for iPhone" program to include VR capabilities.
Munster is perhaps best known among technology enthusiasts as a longtime proponent of Apple building a full-fledged television set. He finally abandoned those hopes last year, telling investors he no longer believed Apple would sell its own HDTV.
Now he has focused his longterm attention on VR and mixed reality, as well as rumors of an Apple-built car.
Comments
oh lord -- are you suggesting AR use in public (or with others) will be somehow more appealing than staring down at your phones during dinner? riiiight.
VR won't be for physical social gatherings. there will, however, be online gatherings. that's why it's called "virtual".
Video games still hold a stigma for being socially isolating, when in fact millions and millions of people socially gather every single day and play them with one another from all over the world. Online gaming with VR looks like it holds some great potential from the little bit I have seen from the nascent Rift and Vive.
As far as other media for example, I don't see how two people watching the same thing together with VR on their couch or from across the globe, is any more isolating or socially awkward than say going out to an IMAX movie for 2.5 hours and sitting in total silence. Once the show is over, you engage with each other over what you just experienced.
The technology is still developing, we are just now getting to where resolution and frame rates are high enough for a decent overall experience. It's come a long way from the low frame rates and basic wire frame/polygon models of decades ago.
The technology isn't fully developed for adoption by the masses. Wearing a large set of goggles with a phone attached and poor battery life isn't what most people are willing to put up with.
Perhaps a pair of designer glasses or sunglasses with micro projectors built into the lenses and a micro radio in the frame itself that connects to a mobile device wirelessly and offers 12 hours of battery life and I would say the technology is ready for prime time.
Not with the current designs, costs and sacrifices. I am not interested and I am rather fond of technology.
And with Android there will be ads splashed all over a person's visual fields.
No thanks.
I am far more interested in an Apple Watch with a built in LTE radio.
What's even more frightening is Google's vision (and keep in mind 80% of their keynote was just that), is how they perceive messaging. Are we really becoming so dumb as a species they we want AI to respond to each other? We can't even form words or sentences? Will humanity only speak with pictographs? Will options to buy things always be in front of us as we communicate? This is scary to me since it literally makes interpersonal relationships simply fodder for advertisers as we digitally grunt at each other.
In my opinion, this is not progress. This is a frightening prospect for our future...
Oh look... self-driving cars too...
Major League Baseball team uses VR for batting practice
When I used one a couple of months ago I was astonished with the great potential of VR. One of the programs I used ported me to Africa to a small village inside a tent. The whole family was there cooking there food and interacting with each other. I could look all around in a 360 degree motion and see exactly how they live. What a great educational tool to use for kids to see how others live in other parts of the world.
Gruber has become yet another whining Apple nag like Marco Arment, who started this whole trend among the elite clique of blogovators. Or maybe it was Dalrymple, who thought he could throw his personal Smithsonian collection of exotic tracks at iTunes and have it come out the same at the other end.
These guys have not grasped the meaning of the word "complexity" yet. They also don't think in terms of cause and effect. They only know that they want it to work for them. Now. But they aren't in the front lines of the gigantic transformation that context-aware data represents.
Google is. Apple is becoming so. Google started as a context-aware entity. They're ahead just as Apple is ahead in hardware, operating systems and media applications.
To be describing Apple's weaknesses in data services compared to Google's as "worrying" or "concerning" — Gruber and the blogovators' favorite new Chicken Little nag terms — is just . . . well, childish, because of its blithe ignorance of cause and effect.
Apple isn't making plastic boxes for strapping on your face because it's an inherently ugly and awkward technology, so they let the tasteless clowns of the industry like Google, Samsung and Sony, along with five or so copycat Chinese plastic mongers, fall all over themselves to see who can make the least or most obnoxious ABS sweatbox.
And you think this is an innovation stampede that Apple should be joining. VR is actually at the stage just before the Motorola flip phones came out to show Samsung and Nokia how to make fat button phones less ugly.
You need something new to go to the Apple store because you've already seen everything they have that you want. So wait for something new. You're impatient because your nervous system is artificially juiced on novelty, and you're addicted. You're a victim of this churning "innovation" culture, which is just yet another version of consumer exploitation. Go ahead, be that way, but maybe you're not an Apple customer.
Instead of Apple's live images they borrowed from Nokia, Samsung's 360° camera will be able to transport you back in time to a place where it might seem you were standing there again, able to look around once again. Travel photos would never seem the same again.
Imagine if they had one of those cameras on the International Space Station and you could 'be' there and look around and down at the Earth in almost real-time. Not for those scared of heights.
eBay have just launched a VR shopping initiative, another potentially big application.
VR Youtube would have quite a bit of potential I think.
The one that has really grabbed my attention is first-person viewpoint drone racing and flying. That looks like an absolute hoot and enough of a reason for VR all on it's own.
Mmm ... Eloi?
The issue is building this into a mobile device. It immediately assumes that VR should be mobile. This means people will be doing this outside of the home. I think there is a big difference in the use case between using the device for training as a tool and as a recreational activity. I don't think it will succeed as the latter.
But I could be wrong.
I'm not narrow minded. Rather I take all things into account and have enough experience with technology to have a tacit knowledge of what works and what doesn't. I am willing to bet that while there will be advancements, it will be a sideshow next year and forgotten... Until someone puts the pieces together to make it appropriate for mass consumption. That's something that Apple does pretty well.
This is where Apple exists: creating products which they see as being beneficial to everyone. The intersection of technology and the humanities. And that's where the money is to be made. Not just the artificial bubble of money generated by speculators trying to get rich quick by getting ahead of the next trend, but the long-term money from creating and selling products which have a certain level of universality and longevity. Those type of products don't come along very often, but they are the ones which are the most important. As far as I'm concerned, Google only has one of those type of products: their search engine. Possibly their cloud service infrastructure as well, but that's only part of a product.
Hmm ... I guess that Apple Maps 3D Flyover qualifies as a form of VR or AR. I always thought that Apple could monetize this by contracting Flyover images to tourist destinations.
Another potential for Apple Maps 3D Flyover. If you watch on a slow Mac you can see that the 3D Maps are built in topographical layers including underwater. Seems to me you could go back in time and approximate the look of an area of interest and then recreate a virtual event -- say the battle of Thermopylae. What a boon to teaching history!
I was cleaning out some old boxes in storage and ran across some old photo albums from our European vacation in 1973. It is interesting that I can get better * images [of some areas] with Apple Maps 3D than these old photos: Colosseum, St. Peters, Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Royal Palace, Madrid ...
* Better == zoomable, rotatable, attitude changes of 3D Virtual images.
Then, combine these with Street View and 3D interior images ...
I think Gene Munster is into porn. Why can't he let the whole TV/VR thing go? The fact that he makes this prediction is proof it will not happen.
I know, I hate anecdotes as much as anyone around here, but that's easily at least 15 people I am close with who would be interested in a prime time product for games or porn, or both. Or just a great VR movie experience, or what we haven't even thought of yet.
And for the record I can't stand Munster, possibly the worst of all analysts.
In 1981, my first Computer Science teacher told me, "Don't waste your time on computer games -- there's no future in it."
Now gaming is bigger than TV and film combined.
VR and AR feel awkward to us today, but I can foresee one possible future where kids interact in a worldwide immersive VR universe. The sci-fi show Caprica included this; it seems plausible.