Google may not have been to first to promote virtual reality (VR), but it was certainly one of the quickest to embrace the re-emergence. The company’s Cardboard head-mounted display (HMD) has spread like wildfire, with its design being copied, adapted and improved on in numerous ways. Next months Google I/O conference at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California is likely to hold a few surprises, with the schedule now detailing what’s in store.
Beginning on Wednesday 18th May, the opening keynote by Google CEO Sundar Pichai will be live-streamed and its here that the major announcements will usually be made.
Following the keynote will be ‘6 Degrees of Freedom Gaming in Android with Project Tango’. Eitan Marder-Eppstein the Developer Engineering Lead for Google’s Project Tango will be discussing how to build a simple Project Tango videogame along with some tips and tricks for development.
‘Introducing Project Tango Area Learning’ by Wim Meeussen the Tango Location team lead, looks at Area Learning where Project Tango can not only see the space around you, but it can also remember the space around you. Rounding of the first day is a talk from Google’s Hai Nguyen on the Vulkan API titled ‘Make shinier, faster mobile games with Vulkan.’
Day two kicks of with another live-streamed talk this time by VR of VR Clay Bavor, simply titled ‘VR at Google’. The description for the event reads ‘What we have built, what we have learned, and where we are headed.’ Google’s new rumoured HMD might make an appearance here.
At 2pm Jessica Brillhart the principal filmmaker for VR at Google will be looking at ‘VR & Cinema’. She’ll be ‘providing some of her own insights from being a creator in this field while highlighting experiences produced by the world’s most prolific VR content creators’, states the description.
The last day doesn’t feature much VR but the last session makes up for that with, ‘Live coding: Make a virtual reality game’. Software engineer Shanee Nishry will be using the Unity Cardboard SDK to create a VR videogame in the hour slot.
VRFocus will be bringing you all the latest details from Google I/O as announcements are made.
