Gadgetory

what's up guys Lew here back with another video and today we're gonna be talking in depth about the Google cardboard VR headset or VR cardboard cut-out that uses your phone to create a headset does that make any sense anyways I recently made a reaction video in which I gave this contraption to a number of individuals who you might recognize and I got some amazing reactions so if you haven't seen that video yet you should definitely go and check it out but this one is dedicated to telling you and showing you how this seemingly boring piece of cardboard can turn your phone into a state of the art virtual reality headset so it all starts with this cutout this cardboard cutout that you construct into what you see here now you can actually make this on your own using plans via the cardboard website so you don't need to purchase one of these just get your hands on some cardboard use the plans and you can make it yourself or you can buy a pre-configured cutout via Amazon if you want something that's a little bit more streamlined and closer to a finished product it's about ten dollars and I'll link that down in the description this is an interesting portion here it's NFC and it will act as a launch point for the official cardboard application which has a bunch of demos in it that allow for you to actually enjoy a virtual reality experience not a hundred percent necessary because you can always launch the cardboard app yourself place your phone down in this section right here you'll notice that the lenses are set back from where your phone is gonna sit on this surface that of course is measured perfectly so that you can absorb each of the two frames that are created on your smart phone the virtual reality effect is then achieved through head tracking and since your phone is strapped to your face essentially through this design the phone becomes part of your head and the consequence of that is that the accelerometer and gyro dthat exist in the phone already will do all of the head tracking necessary so that you can interact with your environment and subsequently have that truehl reality experience so this metal ring here has a corresponding magnet on the other side and as you'll notice I can pull it away but then it springs back to its original location after I let go that's of course where the magnet exists on the other side now at first I was scratching my head trying to figure out exactly how this would equate to a click or a press on your traditional smartphone it turns out it's actually a pretty nifty piece of technology the phone is able to sense magnetic changes caused by the ring magnet combo using the phone's magnetometer which is generally used for compass functionality so that's a cool implementation of some old-school technology in some brand new tech not only does this thing have cardboard it's also got magnets which are super old tech and in this case being used in a way that you wouldn't normally expect so in order to use this device you will obviously need a smart phone as I mentioned earlier that's not such a big deal though at this point many people almost everyone has a smartphone already so it makes a lot of sense to harness the processing capabilities that already exist in your phone and then attach them to a headset like this so that you can have this VR experience with a limited investment using it as dead-simple you just drop your phone down here flip this up and then on the inside here is where you will then see each of the two frames which are going to give you that VR experience so what does this all result in how about the ability to tour cities and spaces in near real-life capacity you can play interactive games have immersive viewing experiences of video content or like in the cardboard app YouTube videos where you have independent videos placed in different locations relative to your head and you can select videos just by moving your neck a little bit a plus you have this really immersive experience as a result in which you feel like you're looking at a hundred inch display or bigger it feels like you're in a movie theater to be honest with you even though you're viewing on a five inch device at this point cardboard to me looks like a very big development in the VR not because it's any better or different than the core of other VR headsets but because of the cost and simplicity the near zero dollar upfront cost of experimenting with cardboard means bringing plenty of development and new imagination into the VR space at this point cardboard looks to me like an accelerant gasoline to the virtual reality bonfire which is set to burn down convention in both entertainment information consumption and quite frankly the way that we interact with the world as a whole so it looks like we're finally going to get that sci-fi future that we were all promised or maybe on a deeper level this is proof that we're already there if VR experiences are already this good where will they be in a hundred years is all of this potentially a very beautiful rendering of some virtual reality remember that whole red pill blue pill thing you