Gadgetory

okay Google Start daydream hey it's Josh regard from Android Authority what's going on everybody and I wanted to bring you a look at Google daydream view and we have a full review of this over at VR source comm and John Velasco was the one to review it so there's a lot of comprehensive information that you'll be able to get from that video and from the accompanying written piece at VR source calm but here at Android authority we just want to bring you a look at it and I thought the best way to do that was by actually giving you a live demo of it now I have used this a little bit already but I'm going to use it again in front of you guys and you'll see what I'm seeing at least half of it rather over on the side here on the frame so with that mind I have my Google pixel and I have the daydream headset right here now the setup is really easy you just open up the daydream app and it guides you through everything and then once you're ready to go you'll just open up daydream and it will prompt you to throw it into the tray it's a nice looking headset we have the slate version here that looks really nice and the fabric is definitely a little bit more comfortable than other iterations that we've seen before but once you put it on you only have this one strap back here and you have to tighten it kind of really tight to keep it centered on your face and it does tend to slide around a little bit so it kind of takes us out of the immersion by having to adjust it every now and then just to make sure we have the best field of view and the other thing that I do have to mention here is at the phone while doing VR or while doing daydream rather tends to get really really hot and even though you have these padded and breathable pieces of fabric over on the front I could kind of feel the heat emanating from the top of the phone here or rather the top of the headset from the side of the phone but without any further ado we are going to jump right into the VR world Wow but once you have it on then you can go ahead and grab the controller here so there is a trackpad or rather touchpad at the top with a couple buttons underneath and the touchpad can be pushed down or to interact with parts of the world now one of the best parts about this is if you point forward and you the home button which is the bottom button you can recenter the screen and it tells you that that's something that other VR headsets kind of struggle with if the gyroscope or whatever it uses in order to spatially put you into the VR world kind of gets off kilter sometimes it doesn't give you an option to recenter it and with the controller you finally get that option and it's really nice to have even then the world doesn't really get off kilter a whole lot so here you're seeing the main world and we have a bit of a polygon ik forest and it looks wonderful the initial tutorial does a really good job of showing you how the controller works and it's a very cute one as well but if I'm able to swivel around by the way the best thing to use for a VR headset like this a swivel chair trust me so swiveling around right now and just seeing everything in this animation it's a good looking animation and especially at the highest resolution it will look quite good through this phone and the quad HD display does a great job of doing that let's go to the Taj Mahal so this is Street View now essentially Street View just is Street View and even in VR it's a lot of the same thing except it gives you immersion through a 360 photo now Street View will just allow me to let's go ahead and play and we'll really play the slideshow I'm just going to move using the controller as you can see here I'm going to move to different portions of the Taj Mahal and it's right in front of me in gorgeous gorgeous resolution it looks very nice the quality of daydream is actually something that we want to highlight here but yeah this is Street View and if I were to go to particular dots on the field I will be able to move over here and see even more and this is the Taj Mahal right in front of me so that experience is actually about the same the only difference is you have a controller and if I look down I can actually see that the controller and it gives me a bit of a tutorial as to what I can do with this controller in the world so finally we're going to move into gaming which i think is the main portion of daydream view or daydream VR that I think actually could change because of this controller so first thing we're going to do is do my Karami the Kurama VR gives us a little robot friend that we have to guide through the particular world now I'm not necessarily moving in this game but because of the 3d aspect and the ability to control the world I can see where I would have to move if I had to let's go ahead and get this moving over here now what I do need to do is move this there it is so kind of move that there and you can see that the 3d space is a highlight of a game like this and it's really nice to be able to control it with more than just what I'm looking at a lot of other VR headsets especially the mobile VR headsets tend to rely on whether or not you're looking at the right spot and it's not necessarily ideal and for puzzle games this is actually a wonderful example of how VR can really change let's say platforming or just gaming genres that we're ready familiar with oops I'm messing up here that you have the ability to control the world to actually control parts of this world and I really think and I'll get into this a little bit later that having a controller like this is only the start what's to stop daydream from tapping into a lot of other controllers that were already available Bluetooth controllers even so we can have things like fighting games or you know even bigger action games okay one more gaming experience just to kind of show this off one more hunters gate now the reason why I want to bring this game up is because it kind of has a it gives me it gives a perfect example of how this controller could make these experiences that much better now there's one thing I want you guys to notice here is that I am moving around the world by moving my finger like it's a joystick over the touchpad and it works beautifully to be honest so if these games are able to leverage it properly then they could lead to even better experiences in VR aside from just looking and hoping that things happen because you're staring at it now that's kind of the point I wanted to make in opening this game Jon Velasco mentions that one of the pitfalls of mobile VR especially this right now is that you're only sitting there or you're just in one particular space and the world kind of washes over you you're not exactly experiencing the space you're not spatially within it so really it's just a perspective type of VR and that's perfectly fine but I think movements via this controller could change that imagine a game that is first-person shooter or first-person perspective and you're running around that kind of kind of marries the two it kind of finds that happy medium and I think we should see a lot more games like that and I hope that we do so that I'll pretty much do it for this look at daydream VR or daydream view as the peripheral is called and overall I think it's a wonderful start and rather a step forward for VR mainly because of this controller now the controller itself does provide you some extra control over the environment over the VR space itself and I think that's a leap forward that should only become better and better as time goes on now the library itself is not really available doesn't have too many things available I should say but that should change over time and in order to get a daydream view headset it'll set you back about $79 now that does sound a little bit steep considering that cardboard itself was kind of free but $79 to me is kind of a small price to pay if you already have a pixel XL and you want to complete the experience that Google is trying to give you with what is already a pretty great phone so with that in mind you can head over to VR source comm for the full review of daydream view and I hope you enjoyed this live demo of what I kind of looked at and what content is available right now and giving you a glimpse into what daydream view can do so keep it tuned to Android 30 for that and even more and don't forget to check out vo source com not only for the full review but for everything else in the world of VR and we have a lot of other websites including sound guys tab times and charged I owe to dive outside the world of Android and when you're done with all of that don't forget to head on over to Andrew authority comm and to subscribe to our YouTube channel for even more because we are your source for all things Android