Google Cardboard Seriously Fun

As simple as they are, cardboard boxes are pretty great. Maybe you transformed one into a fort or castle growing up. Or maybe your kids took last week’s package delivery and turned the box into a puppet theater. The best part about cardboard is that it can become anything—all you need is your imagination.

It’s this same spirit that inspired our team to turn a smartphone, and some cardboard, into a virtual reality (VR) viewer earlier this year. Suddenly, exploring the Palace of Versailles was as easy as opening an app. And the response was kind of delightful.

We’ve been working to improve Google Cardboard ever since. And today—with more than half a million Cardboard viewers in people’s hands—weve got a fresh round of updates for users, developers, and makers.

For users: more apps to enjoy, and more places to buy

There are now dozens of Cardboard-compatible apps on Google Play, and starting today we’re dedicating a new collection page to some of our favorites. These VR experiences range from test drives to live concerts to fully-immersive games, and they all have something amazing to offer. So give ‘em a try today, and download the new Cardboard app to watch the collection grow over time.

Example apps for Cardboard (clockwise, from top left): Vanguard V 3D game, Paul McCartney concert, and Tilt Brush gallery.
If you don’t have a Cardboard viewer yet, you can now pick one up from DODOcase, I Am Cardboard, Knoxlabs, and Unofficial Cardboard. And of course you can always build your own (with new specs below!).

For developers: SDKs for Android and Unity

If you’ve ever tried creating a VR application, then you’ve probably wrestled with issues like lens distortion correction, head tracking, and side-by-side rendering. It’s important to get these things right, but they can suck up all your time—time you’d rather spend on gameplay or graphics.

We want to give you that time back, so today we’re introducing Cardboard SDKs for Android and Unity. The SDKs simplify common VR development tasks so you can focus on your awesome, immersive app. And with both Android and Unity support, you can use the tools you already know and love. Download the SDKs today, and check out apps like Caaaaardboard! and Tilt Brush Gallery to see what’s already possible.

For makers: tool-specific specs, and custom viewer calibration

To help bring VR experiences to everyone, we open sourced a Cardboard viewer specification earlier this year. Since then we’ve seen all sorts of viewers from all sorts of makers, and today we’re investing in this community even further.

For starters, we’re publishing new building specs with specific cutting tools in mind. So whether you’re laser- or die-cutting your Cardboard viewers in high quantities, or carving single units with a blade, we’ve got you covered.

Once you’ve got your custom viewer, we also want to help you tailor the viewing experience to its unique optical layout. So early next year we’ll be adding a viewer calibration tool to the Cardboard SDK. You’ll be able to define your viewer’s base and focal length, for example, then have every Cardboard app adjust accordingly.

For the future: watch this space, and we’re hiring

The growth of mobile, and the acceleration of open platforms like Android make it an especially exciting time for VR. There are more devices, and more enthusiastic developers than ever before, and we can’t wait to see what’s next! We’re also working on a few projects ourselves, so if you’re passionate about VR, you should know we’re hiring.

Here’s to the cardboard box, and all the awesome it brings.

by Andrew Nartker, Product Manager, Google Cardboard

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Googles interactive StarWars page

Visit google.com/starwars and choose your side.

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Ho Ho Ho! Googles Santa Tracker is now open source

Posted by Ankur Kotwal, Software Engineer

The holiday spirit is about giving and though we’re early into April, we’re still in that spirit. Today, we’re announcing that Googles Santa Tracker is now open source on GitHub at google/santa-tracker-web and google/santa-tracker-android. Now you can see how we’ve used many of our developer products to build a fun and engaging experience that runs across the web and Android.

Santa Tracker isn’t just about watching Santa’s progress as he delivers presents on December 24. Visitors can also have fun with the winter-inspired games and an interactive North Pole village while Santa prepares for his big journey throughout the holidays.

Below is a summary of what we’ve released as open source.

Android app

• The Santa Tracker Android app is a single APK, supporting all devices running Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) and up. The source code for the app can be found here.

• Santa’s village is a canvas-based graphical launcher for videos, games and the tracker. In order to span 10,000 pixels in width, the village uses the Android resource hierarchy in a unique way to scale graphics without needing assets for multiple density buckets, thereby reducing the APK size.
• Games on Santa Tracker Android are built using a combination of technologies such as JBox2D (gumball game), Android view hierarchy (memory match game) and OpenGL with a purpose-built rendering engine (jetpack game).
• To help with user engagement, the app uses the App Indexing API to enable autocomplete support for Santa Tracker games from Google Search. This is done using deep linking.

Android Wear

• The custom watch faces on Android Wear provide a personalized touch. Having Santa or one of his friendly elves tell the time brings a smile to all. Building custom watch faces is a lot of fun but providing a performant, battery friendly watch face requires certain considerations. The watch face source code can be found here.
• Santa Tracker uses notifications to let users know when Santa has started his journey. The notifications are further enhanced to provide a great experience on wearables using custom backgrounds and actions that deep link into the app.

On the web

• Santa Tracker on the web was built using Polymer, a powerful new library from the Chrome team based on Web Components. Santa Tracker’s use of Polymer demonstrates how easy it is to package code into reusable components. Every scene in Santas village (games, videos, and interactive pages) is a custom element, only loaded when needed, minimizing the startup cost of Santa Tracker.
• Santa Tracker’s interactive and fun experience is built using the Web Animations API, a standardized JavaScript API for unifying animated content - this is a huge leap up from using CSS animations. Web Animations can be written imperatively, are supported in all modern browsers via polyfills and Polymer uses them internally to create its amazing material design effects. Examples of these animations can be found using this GitHub search.

• Santa believes in mobile first; this years experience was built to be optimized for the mobile web, including a fully responsive design, touch gesture support using Polymer, and new features like meta-theme color and the application manifest for add to homescreen.
• To provide exceptional localization support, a new i18n-msg component was built, a first for Web Components. Modeled after the Chrome extension i18n system, it enables live page-refresh for development but has a build step for optimization.

Now that the source code is also available, developers can see many of the parts that come together to make Santa Tracker. We hope that developers are inspired to make their own magical experiences.

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The Google Fit Developer Challenge winners

Posted by Angana Ghosh, Product Manager, Google Fit

Last year, we teamed up with adidas, Polar, and Withings to invite developers to create amazing fitness apps that integrated the new Google Fit platform. The community of Google Fit developers has flourished since then and to help get them inspired, we even suggested a few ideas for new, fun, innovative fitness apps. Today, we’re announcing the twelve grand prize winners, whose apps will be promoted on Google Play.

• 7MinGym: All you need is this app, a chair, and a wall to start benefiting from 7 minute workouts at home. You can play music from your favorite music app and cast your workout to Chromecast or Android TV.
• Aqualert: This app reminds you to stay hydrated throughout the day and lets you track your water intake.
• Cinch Weight Loss and Fitness: Cinch helps you with detailed information your steps taken and calories burned. The app also supports heart-rate tracking with compatible Android Wear devices.
• FitHub: FitHub lets you track your fitness activity from multiple accounts, including Google Fit, and multiple wearable devices, including Android Wear. You can also add your friends to compare your progress!
• FitSquad: FitSquad turns fitness into a competition. Join your friends in a squad to compare progress, track achievements, and cheer each other on.
• Instant - Quantified Self: Instant is a lifestyle app that helps you track not only your physical activity but your digital activity too and tells you how much you’re using your phone and apps.other activity. You can also set usage limits and reminders.
• Jump Rope Wear Counter: This simple app lets you count your jump rope skips with an Android Wear device.
• Move it!: This app packs one neat feature – it reminds you to get up and move about if you haven’t been active in the last hour.
• Openrider - GPS Cycling Riding: Track and map your cycle routes with Openrider.
• Running Buddies: In this run tracking app, runners can choose to share their runs and stats with those around them so that they can find other runners similar to themselves to go running with.
• Strength: Strength is a workout tracking app that also lets you choose from a number of routines, so you can get to your workout quickly and track it without manual data entry. Schedules and rest timers come included.
• Walkholic: Walkholic is another way to see your Google Fit walking, cycling, and running data. You can also turn on notifications if you don’t meet your own preset goals.

We saw a wide range of apps that integrated Google Fit, and both the grand prize winners and the runner ups will be receiving some great devices from our challenge partners to help with their ongoing fitness app development: the X_CELL and SPEED_CELL from adidas, a new Android Wear device, a Loop activity tracker with a H7 heart rate sensor from Polar, and a Smart Body Analyzer from Withings.

We’re thrilled these developers chose to integrate the Google Fit platform into their apps, giving users one place to keep all their fitness activities. With the user’s permission, any developer can store or read the user’s data from Google Fit and use it to build powerful and useful fitness experiences. Find out more about integrating Google Fit into your app.

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