We finally bought ourselves a Google Cardboard VR set. Writing about the Bosch VR app made us a little curious, but we didn’t realize until recently how cheap it is to actually buy a Cardboard set! You could even make your own, which we were considering at first until we figured it was just too hard to source all the lenses and stuff. Particularly when the VR viewers start from approx $15 and scale up from there.
Make your own – via Google
After the viewer, then what?
The basic Google Cardboard apps are pretty good: the polygon art one was great, and the 360 walking photos of places like Tokyo, London and Paris were fun. Unfortunately for us, working in a ad/design studio meant that everyone was using an iPhone, and the iOS YouTube app doesn’t have 360 Cardboard integration as yet (sadface). There’s a 3rd party 360 app that gets around this, in360Tube, but we’ve yet to try that out. Other things that we’ve tried:
- 1. The NYTVR
The New York Times’ VR app seemed great at the start, with live interactive news segments. Possibly the news media of the future? (Strange that the NYTVR branding doesn’t seem to reference the main NYT branding, but that’s just us). For some reason we couldn’t get our Walking in New York video to load in HD, oh well.
- 2. Sisters
The most immersive VR gaming experience is probably going to be in the field of horror, and Sisters does just that. Play this in the dark.
- 3. Bosch VR
An incredible painting made better through VR. Amazing and fun. Check it out!
Now if only iOS YouTube would get around to Cardboard integration…