Inside Google’s Plan to Make Virtual Reality Mainstream Before Facebook Can | MIT Technology Review

Inside Google's Plan to Make Virtual Reality Mainstream Before Facebook Can | MIT Technology Review

{ action.text } Google Aims to Make VR Hardware Irrelevant Before It Even Gets Going Smartphones have sidelined digital cameras and other special-purpose devices. Now Google thinks mobile phones will shove virtual-reality headsets like the Oculus Rift into the shadows, too. By Tom Simonite on November 3, 2015 The bright black sand at Diamond Beach, Iceland, is dotted with smooth gray pebbles and glassy chunks of ice. The crash of foamy waves fills my ears as I turn my head to look up and down the beach and see the dark strip of sand fade into white fog as if it goes on forever. I don't feel the cold, because I'm not really there. Moments earlier, I had been standing in a cable car climbing over Onomichi, Japan. I'm in a windowless room at Google's headquarters, holding a cardboard box against my face in a way that positions a smartphone two inches from my eyes. Google Cardboard, as both the phone holder and the accompanying app are called,

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