Yesterday, we saw some interesting information in Unreal Engine’s latest preview in regards to Android VR. Today, we’re getting some more information on this VR headset. According to Peter Rojas over on Twitter, it will be a standalone headset (unlike Cardboard which uses your smartphone as the display) and will “definitely be announced next week”. Of course, Google I/O 2016 is taking place next week (May 18-20) in Mountain View, CA. He also mentions that Android VR will be less powerful than the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift. In a later tweet, Rojas mentions that it is also supposedly going to be better than the Gear VR as well. So we’re looking at something in between the HTC Vive and Google Cardboard, likely both in terms of hardware/performance and pricing.
Rojas continues to explain that the performance won’t be as good as the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift because it’s using “mobile hardware”. We’ll have to wait until the actual announcement next week, to see what kind of hardware we’re looking at inside this headset. It’s unclear whether “Android VR” will be the final name when the headset heads to the market, or if that is just the internal name for this project.
Google has been at the forefront of VR, this time around. After launching Google Cardboard a few years ago – as an easy way for users to get their hands on some virtual reality experience without breaking the bank – the company has been dedicated to making the experience better for their users. In fact they even created a division at Google for VR. There have been rumors that they were working on their own headset, which reportedly was shown to a few people at Google I/O last year in San Francisco, CA.
Virtual Reality will only be a part of what Google likely has up their sleeves for Google I/O next week in Mountain View. We’ll likely see some Android, Chrome, Project Tango and many other announcements at the annual developer conference. The rumor mill has been pretty quiet this year, in terms of what to expect at the show. So we may be in for some pretty great surprises, come next Wednesday.