Google Cardboard: Cheap Virtual Reality in a box
Virtual Reality: a buzzword that has been floating around for the better part of the last three decades. Its roots actually extend farther back (to the 1960s, believe it or not, when a naval engineer mulled over more effective ways to portray graphical information for war strategies). But it was only during the 90s that popular interest in the subject was piqued with such movies as The Lawnmower Man, and of the course The Matrix Trilogy.These days, products like the Oculus Rift are all the rage, and it’s not surprising to hear about new and pathbreaking ways in which virtual reality is on the cusp of changing everything from entertainment to medical procedures. If you happen to be a product developer who has the dough to spring on a pre-release VR kit, you’re clearly at the bleeding edge of it. But for the rest of us, it’s safe to say that virtual reality is still a while away. Or is it?At their I/O conference in June this year, Google sprung a surprise just before the curtains went down--a doohickey they called Google Cardboard, which promised a VR experience using nothing more than folded cardboard, some lenses, and a decent cell phone. The prospect of experiencing virtual reality by simply slotting your phone into the front of a cardboard box seemed almost too good to be true. Folks thought it was a prank, and little importance was accorded to it at the time. But several months on, there’s a growing tribe of developers that are creating ever more intriguing apps for this too-simplistic-to-be-true product. I decided to get one and find out firsthand whether there was really any bite to its bark.So how do you get your hands on one? Two ways: if you’re up for some elbow grease, you can download the instructions for building Google Cardboard, source a few simply components, and make one yourself. Or you could just buy one online. I found a pretty decent implementation online--this one was laser cut and actually built slickly, using a material slightly tougher than cardboard, lending it a more lasting heft.