Everything that’s needed to play VR content and apps will be built into the standalone headset itself, Google announced at its annual I/O developer conference.
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As revealed today at the Google I/O conference, Google has announced a new Vive headset that uses Daydream, Google’s VR platform that launched previous year.
Variety, citing multiple sources, claims that Google is working on such kind of product for more than a year. Google is working on standalone headsets with Lenovo Group Ltd. and HTC Corp., the company said. The new standalone device, however, wouldn’t require a PC or smartphone for power, like Google’s DayDream and Samsung’s GearVR, or Facebook’s Oculus and HTC’s Vive, as it could feature it’s own processor to supply the power. These will be among the first virtual reality headsets that are completely untethered, requiring no additional hardware.
With this new integration, you’ll have the whole Chrome experience at your virtual fingertips in your VR world, just as you would on your phone or PC.
Google is now hosting its yearly I/O festival in Mountain View, California. We’re yet to see exactly what this headset looks like, but we suspect it will be close to the reference devices that Qualcomm has produced in the past. This enables positional tracking, meaning the headset tracks the user’s movements in space without the need for external sensors.
While a release date for the device has yet to be announced, HTC and Lenovo are developing headsets using Google’s standalone platform. We’ll report back as more details are shared. Other VR headsets like Sony’s PlayStation VR must be connected to the PlayStation 4 in order to get fully functional.
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The current incarnation of the Daydream headsets are little more than head-mounted containers for smartphones, but Google’s latest offering seeks to free users from their smartphones.
