I’ve just finished assembling my Google cardboard kit that arrived this morning.
Man, am I going to have fun with this. I especially love the 360-degree YouTube cardboard videos. For those who haven’t experienced it yet, it allows you to move around in 3D video space (e.g. inside a music video) and watch the video as if you are part of the video.
Has anyone else played with Google cardboard goggles yet?
I hear that in Sweden, you can get the kit at participating McDonalds with the purchase of a Happy Meal. Wow! We coud have the movies in Odorama! All we need is a plane ticket to Sweden.
I wonder if the experiment will go global… Can’t wait! 
[quote=254688:@Louis Desjardins]I hear that in Sweden, you can get the kit at participating McDonalds with the purchase of a Happy Meal. Wow! We coud have the movies in Odorama! All we need is a plane ticket to Sweden.
I wonder if the experiment will go global… Can’t wait! :-)[/quote]
http://happygoggles.se/en/
That is awesome… we need a Swedish McDonald’s in South Africa…
I have this one. https://www.durovis.com/index.html
Better build than cardboard.
I’m quite happy with it, just a slight issue with some of the foam (that sits between the plastic and your face) coming loose. Need to readjust it every now and again.
The Durovis looks very nice. Would be interesting to know how big the difference in projection quality is between the cheap cardboard goggles, and the more professional goggles like the Durovis.
The Google Cardboard app (on my iPhone 6) is amazing… even visited the Eiffel Tower this morning with it.
I’ve completely underestimated the user experience that VR provides.
Probably not so much difference in projection quality, mostly in the comfort of wearing it.
I’m actually considering buying this one http://zeissvrone.tumblr.com/#vr-for-everyone
That one probably has a better projection quality.
Yes, I also have a plastic one (19 Euros I think). The effect is similar as the original cardboard one. One thing I do have in some VR players is a weird ‘shift to the right’. I do not have it in the original cardboard app.
Just one note. If you have one using a magnet: I have broken one phone using these experiments because it screwed up the magnetic sensor of the phone.
@Dirk Cleenwerck Bit expensive to just play with, but looks very nice!
Thank you for the heads up.
The interaction that the magnet switch adds to the user experience however, takes the goggles from being just a novelty to something much more serious.
Will however do some blog reading about its negative effects on the phone’s magnetic sensor before I start using it too extensively with my phone.
@Alwyn Bester I did use it VERY extensively, so probably nothing too much to worry about
I got a cardboard in a subscription box a while back. Interesting experience, but you look like a total dork using it. Maybe it’s my age telling, but Keanu Reeves in Johnny Mnemonic comes to mind.
In my day, the ultimate VR viewer was the Viewmaster.
The ViewMaster of today aint yer grandpa’s viewmaster 
http://www.view-master.com/en-us
Alain, do you perhaps know of any good augmented reality apps that can be used with the cardboard goggles?
E.g. where it uses the camera to show your surroundings realtime, but then have augmented features added to the realtime view…
[quote=254967:@Alwyn Bester]Alain, do you perhaps know of any good augmented reality apps that can be used with the cardboard goggles?
E.g. where it uses the camera to show your surroundings realtime, but then have augmented features added to the realtime view…[/quote]
This is exactly the killer app that has not appeared yet. But there is a world of difference between a close UI with VR, and the complexity of analyzing the view from the camera and insert objects with perspective into it, as well as taking into account objects in the front that mask the view. Confer the object under the table in the Hololens demo.
It probably requires a huge processing power that I doubt even the fastest phone today can provide.
Thank you for clarifying Michel.
It’s going to be interesting to see how VR technology evolves in the next few years, as the processing power on phones becomes better.
@Alwyn Bester You’re mixing two thing: VR and AR. In the VR (like with googles cardboard) everything is prerecorded and it just changes the point of view according to your position. The closest I’ve seen was a video where the app could show info boxes on buildings with more information. But this was still prebuild, not with realtime info. For AR, Hololens is the one to look out for. But is going to be a lot more expensive than a cardboard
On Google I/O, people are expecting something new from google on this topic, so maybe this time they found a cheap way to do AR…
VR with a single camera will be limited with the kind of thing Google glass does : placing labels over reality.
3D VR requires a couple cameras. So it is a question of specialized hardware as well as very complex software.
Microsoft Hololens is the best example. If I remember right, the developer kit is $3000. That is because it requires cutting edge hardware.
I maybe wrong, but apart from hard core gamers and maybe CAD, Oculus VR and the like may just remain a fad. There is only so much one can do with a super dorky headset. Remember, it is not the first time this kind of thing is marketed. There were things like that in arcades, and eventually they just passed.
AR is a completely different ball game. From Glass to Hololens, it is just the beginning,
I would not call VR a fad anymore. It’s just more of a niche market. And Google saw that it was not up to them to determine the market, just to make the technology available; and let the market define itself.
There are already at least two medical equipment tech companies (very well known) working on it, after some good exposure on that end (http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a18901/doctors-use-google-cardboard-to-save-an-infant-girls-life/). Of course when they are done, it won’t be the $20 cardboard googles, but hey that is what the market is for (to decide what the applied technology is worth).
And then the US education system is also adopting the VR module in many high-achieving schools (https://www.google.com/edu/expeditions/).
I am not saying any of these define VR as here to stay, but the technology is so affordable now that there is a lot more traction for it to stay past the fad phase. As for AR, well it is entering the stages VR was in a decade or two ago (with the added benefit that Moore’s law is speeding things up for its adoption).
Indeed VR has definite applications for remote presence, for modelization, that will certainly evolve as professional tools.
Oculus for games is more dicey, until Moore’s law makes it dirt cheap together with the mandatory powerful PC (PS 3 or X-Box prices).
Cardboard and the like are better candidates to be the rage, then fade out as everybody will have one in a drawer gathering dust. Inexpensive modern ViewMasters. Same thing as what happened to the previous generation for people of my age.
Stereoscopic photography has been around all along since the beginning of it.
Being son and grand son of photographers, I even played with the grand grand father of the ViewMaster, a big wooden box with goggles to view 6 x 13 cm black and white glass stereoscopic views.
We are talking early 20th century.