Google today announced DayDream, its Virtual Reality platform for smartphones which includes a reference design for a VR headset and controller alongwith smartphone specifications which would be compatible with VR apps.
With DayDream Google is trying to lay down a framework for both hardware and software to provide a high quality VR experience on an Android smartphone. On the software front, Google has blessed Android N with its own VR Mode which essentially features performance improvements to reduce latency between your movement and the content on display. At present for smartphones, the motion to photon latency is pegged under 20ms with GearVR. To that end, Android N's entire software stack has been re-build keeping graphics in mind and they have been able to achieve that low-latency on Google Cardboard as well.
DayDream ready phones are already in the works from Samsung, Asus, HTC, LG, Xiaomi and Huawei to name a few. The company has also provided a reference design for a VR headset under the DayDream platform which the manufacturers can use to build their offerings. With these specifications in place manufacturers would have to include the specific hardware to make their phone VR compatible in the future which would include specific sensors, processing horsepower and display resolution.
Google has also rebuilt its apps like YouTube to suit the VR Mode, and we will see more apps joining soon with a dedicated section in the Play Store. But there is no word on how much would this VR headset would cost and when would the first DayDream ready smartphones be available yet.
