Chapter 1. Virtual Reality for Everyone
Welcome to the exciting new world of virtual reality! We're sure that, as an Android developer, you want to jump right in and start building cool stuff that can be viewed using Google Cardboard. Your users can then just slip their smartphone into a viewer and step into your virtual creations. Before we get up to our elbows in the code and tech stuff throughout the rest of this book, let's take an outside-in tour of VR, Google Cardboard, and its Android SDK to see how they all fit together. We will discuss the following topics in this chapter:
- Why is it called Cardboard?
- The spectrum of virtual reality devices
- A gateway to VR
- The value of low-end VR
- Cardware
- Configuring your Cardboard viewer
- Developing apps for Cardboard
- An overview of VR best practices