A new app called Cardboard Camera allows anyone with an Android smartphone to easily create 360° panoramic virtual reality photographs.
Through a small amount of visual trickery, Google’s Cardboard Camera app simulates depth by making some objects appear closer and others farther away. The application accomplishes this by sending different photos to each eye in order to create a 3D environment.
Google’s Cardboard Camera is available on the Google Play Store. Google Cardboard, the company’s low-cost VR headset, costs roughly $20 depending on which model you purchase.
While Google Cardboard doesn’t offer the visual fidelity or gaming capabilities of upcoming VR devices like the Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR, it works as a gateway device, showing the uninitiated what virtual reality is capable of.
While Google’s new Cardboard Camera app is great, the process of actually creating a VR photo is finicky. It requires the user to slowly pan their camera in a circle and the process halts if you move your smartphone too quickly.
Download Cardboard Camera from the Google Play Store at this link.
Related reading: Tête-à-Tête: HTC Vive vs. PlayStation VR – Which VR headset is more impressive?
[source]Google Play Store[/source][via]Tech Crunch[/via]
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