Google Cardboard (VR) Notes + Google Camera Test

Notes from playing with games on Google Cardboard App.

• Motion Sickness!! (made worse by games you have to move around a lot for - with no central point of focus) (Some headsets have it so you can see the sides of the helmet youre wearing, helps with motion sickness.)
• Add audio/headphones for immersivity
• Make sure "line" on phone screen matches up with line in cardboard VR
• 360 degrees TOO IMMERSIVE (Especially for horror games) Scary.
• Really nice for viewing more arty style games/landscapes/not as bad for feeling sick.
• Good for viewing art for VR games (better idea of how it could look in 3D)
• No apps for uploading art, some for panoramic camera photo viewing. 
• Cardboard Camera: This app allows you to capture a 360 photo, which is basically a panoramic photo that goes all the way around. (Could take panoramic photo of a printed out painting? See if that works.)
• Cardboard photos are linear, so no looking up or down.
• PSViewer is a good Cardboard VR app for viewing photospheres, a photosphere is a collection of stitched images that creates a 360 image, like you're looking at the inside of a photographic ball. 
• Need a phone that fits the gen of google cardboard that you're using.
• Google Cardboard also favours phones with higher pixel density, higher resolution doesn't make much difference. (Samsung galaxy s6 will work better than an iPhone 6)
• Your phone needs gyroscope to be able to use the app
• Need to be running android 4.1 or up
• Minimal external navigation options, such as controllers, compared to higher end VR
• Many apps utilise "hover navigation"
• More expensive/later versions of cardboard VR feature a button on the "VR machine"
• Android phones have a wider variety of apps for use with Cardboard VR

Google Cardboard test - putting my own work into google Cardboard

There aren't any apps on google cardboard that allow you to put drawings into Google Cardboard in order to turn them into VR. There is an app on Google Cardboard, however, called Google camera which allows you to turn photos into VR. I hoped to use this app to photograph my drawings and turn them into a VR image that could be used using teh google cardboard app and viewer. 

Using the google camera app on google cardboard I did the first test: taking a photo of my own surroundings.

Test 1:

Photo I took using Google Camera is downloadable and viewable through the google camera app through this link: https://vr.google.com/vrphoto/AIJsmdkIYPjHUBtFtkQCTnPL7YTvTSv1kdd09Qk-cekRQ-6SgXaruSIxOH4E

This worked really well. You have to move the camera REALLy slowly when you take the photo though so it took ages to get right. It's actually really effective, it's weird looking at my room in the VR camera because things are in a different place to where they are in real life, it's taken the photo so everythings sun a bit to the right - so when you take the headset off its very bizarre. The only issue is with this app is because it takes a panoramic shot you can't look up or down. 

Test 2: 

Going from taking a panoramic photo, I wanted to see if I could take a panoriamic photo of my own work to view in VR.

Photo I took downloadable/viewable through google cardboard camera app -  link here: https://vr.google.com/vrphoto/AIJsmdmBgWDrUxIcrPlkf8zOPkXoW4h6yjT7aa2Cjg2zPpNU0J-DXgBTq23T

This didn't work very well. I was hoping to just go really slow moving the camera over the drawing and then finishing the panoramic shot early but this only gives a very small shot of an image and the rest of the environment is just blank (see test in cardboard app)

I learnt that that image/drawing i wanted to put in google VR would have to be a full 360 drawing for the app to take an image of the drawing and render it as a VR environment.

Test 3:

Because I realised from the last test that the drawing to be made into VR would have to be a full 360 Image, I tried laying out a really long drawing (just doodled in promarker) to take a panorama of and put into google camera. I thought this would be a really good way of solving the problem. I thought if this worked, I could do a real drawing this long and change it into VR. Unfortunately, when I tried to film this the app told me the image I took would have to be upright and so it wouldn't let me take a photo at all. 

Test 4:

Test Viewable on google camera app, downloadable from this link: https://vr.google.com/vrphoto/AIJsmdmSMJFNy0koRQ6RqRf7bAU5_qn5nkxw_DBENuclMC-1M7v2RjxJetMZ

As a final test, I pinned all the pieces of paper up against a wall so I could film them with my phone upright to see if this long, upright image could get one of my artworks into google cardboard via the google camera app. This did not work either. The gyroscope in the app could sense I was walking sideways to film the image, not round in a circle, so the result viewable through the link is just all the sheets of paper really bunched up in one place, with the rest of the 360 blank.

Conclusion 

In conclusion, I don't think google cardboard is an upcoming way to get artwork viewed in 360 in an industry pipeline. Firstly, the app doesn't work for drawings yet despite that, you'd need to use a steady cam to film the drawing to stop your shaking when you film the artwork which would add extra unnecessary steps and also cost because you'd need to pay for a steady cam to film the artwork. Also, the artwork made would need to be ginormous to get it into VR and this just wouldn't be time effective - it would take way too long. Because of this, I've concluded that Google Cardboard is a great platform if you're developing VR apps that you want to be accessible to a wide audience, however, it's not good for viewing artwork. It's a faff and would definitely not improve the current industry standard concept design process. Because of this, I'm going to look at alternate ways time-based media and Vr could help the concept art pipeline.