Google isn’t building the ultimate VR headset. It’s setting the foundation for one
When word spread in 2016 that Google would move into serious virtual reality, not just disposable cardboard viewers, my colleague Dieter Bohn immediately put a couple of pieces together. One was the need for headsets that could track motion without dedicated “VR rooms” full of cameras or markers. The other was Project Tango, a Google experiment that used an array of cameras to map physical space. Google only announced the more modest Daydream mobile headset that year, but a Tango-powered device seemed inevitable. At I/O 2017, it finally arrived, in the form of a standalone headset that’s supposed to ship later this year.
Google head of VR Clay Bavor describes the new headset as one point on a spectrum called “immersive computing,” an…
