On the second day of its Google I/O 2017 developer conference, the Mountain View tech giant took center stage to shine a light on its advancements in the VR and AR ecosystem. With regards to the same, Google has today announced a massive update for its VR platform codenamed Daydream Euphrates and one of its highlights is the addition of a version of Chrome browser to the same.
This second iteration of the mobile-focused virtual reality platform brings maturity to the platform first shown off by Google at the I/O developer conference previous year. Daydream 2.0 is built upon the latest flavor of Google’s mobile operating system, Android O and especially emphasizes on the UI interface, as well as sharing capabilities. This update will come to Android later in Summer.
But, the spotlight has been snatched by the integration of a version of Chrome which has been optimized to seamlessly operate on Google’s virtual reality platform. Using this offering, you’ll easily be able to browse through your favorite website using Daydream controllers. It had launched an exclusive platform called WebVR experiences to give you a taste of how the same would look like.
Since we’re already acquainted with Chrome on our desktops or mobile and the VR browser is an extension of the same. Hence, all your bookmarks and personalizations will be ported to Daydream and augmented reality situations — where you will be able to pin the browser in the real world. An experimental build of Chromium with an AR API is also coming soon.
For those unaware with WebVR, it is an experimental JavaScript API developed by a cohort of Mozilla engineers to provide driving support for the web to VR headsets. This means you can access content from the web on head-mounted displays. The technology is presently at a nascent stage but Oculus and Samsung have also started building their own browsers for the VR ecosystem.
As has been said before, Google has been on the backfoot in developing its virtual and augmented reality capabilities. It is instead focused on strengthening its arsenal by furthering its reach on the AI and voice interaction front. Due to the same reason, the tech giant only just introduced the Daydream VR last year and is steadily laying the foundation for what can one day surely become the underlying platform for VR/AR experience.
