Wondering what this mundane piece of cardboard is doing in the world of tech? Well, this seemingly boring piece of cardboard can immediately turn your smartphone into an out-of-the-world virtual reality headset. This is nothing but the Google Cardboard which aims at developing accessible virtual reality (VR) tools to let everyone experience VR in an exciting way!
How does it work?
1. You don’t need any rocket science to get this going. All you need to do is place your smartphone over the section marked as in the above image. This section has a NFC chip that acts as a launch point for the official cardboard application
2. The cardboard is fitted with a pair of lenses of 40 mm focal distances through which the user can look back into the smart phone.
3. Now this is something quirky. This is a ring shaped piece of magnet that is attached to the cardboard. Since you can’t touch your phone while it’s strapped inside the cardboard, this diminutive magnet acts as a button which you can move and the cardboard will respond as if you’ve touched the screen. This magnet produces magnetic changes which are further detected by your phone using its magnetometer. You don’t often get to see magnets attached to the exterior of your devices. Simple and interesting, isn’t it?
4.The Google Cardboard basically achieves the Virtual Reality effect through head tracking. In simply words, your phone, which is strapped to your face, becomes a part of your head and the accelerometer present in your phone does the trick. It does all the required head tracking to help you interact with your surroundings. When you move your head, the images you see through the lenses will make you feel as if you’re in the same place as being shown on your smartphone.
Through the advent of this amazing Google Cardboard, which is pretty easy to design and most importantly, very convenient to use, VR has surely advanced one more step forward. Yes!
References :
www.techradar.com,
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