Google, GoPro bring virtual reality to the masses with Jump

Marco della Cava | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Google Cardboard set to Jump to new level USA TODAY's Marco Della Cava checks out the for-the-masses virtual reality platform will soon be provided with a growing library of spherical video content.

SAN FRANCISCO—Virtual reality may be a part of your life sooner than you think.

Google Thursday announced a series of improvements to its Cardboard project, which aims to bring virtual reality to the masses, with the promise that you could be watching You Tube-stored VR videos come July.

The changes to the year-old VR initiative – which uses software to transform an average smartphone into a 3-D-viewing device held in place by a $20 cardboard frame – are notable. They take virtual reality one step closer to being an experience that isn't limited to owners of expensive gadgets such as Samsung VR ($250) and Facebook's Oculus Rift (around $350).

The news about Cardboard, which was distributed to the 5,000 developers as they exited the keynote address at Google's annual developers conference, was delivered by product vice president and project lead Clay Bavor.

He noted that the platform is now available to iOS phone owners, expanding Cardboard's reach beyond Android users to the Apple customer base. Also, a new program called Expeditions is aimed at allowing teachers to take kids around the world with VR.

But the biggest news involves Google's new partnership with camera-maker GoPro, which could solve the missing link for VR: enough content to make using the headsets worthwhile. GoPro is putting the finishing touches on a merry-go-round-like rig that will support 16 GoPro Hero4 cameras whose spherical footage will record the content VR watchers will see.

This GoPro product is different from a six-camera spherical rig due later this year that was announced Wednesday at the Code conference in Los Angeles by company founder Nick Woodman. This VR one-two punch has impressed investors in the San Mateo, Calif. company, with GoPro (GPRO) shares up nearly 7% Thursday to $56.81.

GoPro plans to unveil what it is calling the 360-Degree Camera Array in July (no price yet, but 16 GoPro Hero 4s alone will set you back $8,000), the same month Google will begin hosting the array's so-dubbed Jump videos on its YouTube network.

"Soon, I hope we'll all be able to jump between the 1,000 most beautiful places on earth with Cardboard," Bavor told USA TODAY recently during a sneak-peak of the upgrades to Cardboard at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. "We're going to enable anyone who's motivated to capture events and places anywhere in virtual reality. We're leveling the playing field."

Cardboard debuted last summer, and since then Google estimates that some 1 million devices have been built or purchased, and an equal number of Cardboard apps have been downloaded on Android devices.

A broad range of companies have taken advantage of the Cardboard platform. These include Jaunt VR, which allows viewers to watch a live Paul McCartney song in VR and Volvo giving prospective customers a virtual ride in a new model.

This week's Cardboard overhaul includes simpler blueprints for a larger smartphone holder that will accommodate Samsung Nexus 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

Smartphone holders sold online by third-party companies position the phone the right distance from a pair of basic lenses. Some intrepid fans have taken to building their own holders, made from materials ranging from plastic to furniture-grade wood.

If you think teachers and students might particularly benefit from comparatively inexpensive VR tools, Google agrees.

Expeditions is another new Cardboard offshoot. It arms instructors with a tablet that can communicate with 30 Cardboard-powered VR goggles, allowing teachers to take students to exotic locales while remotely pointing out highlights that students can zoom towards with just a turn of their heads.

"Who doesn't like field trips?" says Bavor, 32 who describes himself as a VR nerd who at age 12 built a rudimentary 3-D tour of his childhood home. "This is all about teachers having a new tool at their disposal. Some of the (test) classrooms have gone to Verona while reading Romeo and Juliet, or visited the Great Wall of China to learn more about the math that went into its construction."

Bavor says teachers interested in having an Expeditions kit visit their classrooms should check for updates at g.co/expeditions.

At present, most of the places available to visit via Expeditions are rendered in hyper-real 2-D. While impressive, the same experience seen through a spherical 3-D Jump video clearly would take populist VR to a new level.

GoPro's contribution to this democratization of VR video production is both the rig that accurately positions the 16 cameras but also solving for the not insignificant challenges of synchronizing the brains of all the cameras and ensuring that battery-life and overheating issues don't compromise a shoot.

"The rig is actually the easiest part of this equation," says C.J. Prober, GoPro's senior vice president of software and services. "We make sure those 16 cameras film as one. Once that can be solved, all the excitement and investment in spherical content can really take off. (Video) capture has been the issue as far as growth goes."

For its part, Google will use its significant computing power to take Jump videos that are uploaded to YouTube and massage each one so that there are no visual miscues.

Bavor fires up his laptop to show how the company-made Jump video of a tool-and-bike stuffed Japanese motorcycle shop would look without Google's tweaking. There are numerous "stitching" issues at points where the cameras overlap. With the push of a button, those hiccups dissolve and the image is unified.

The same happens with a video Google took of a Japanese street at night. Viewed through a Cardboard holder, the densely packed neon-lit avenue comes to life. One can imagine Google Street View eventually being upgraded to Jump quality videos, allowing a strikingly real virtual visit to a faraway avenue.

"I've personally been dreaming about this stuff since I was a kid," says Bavor. "I can only imagine what people will do with this technology now that it's in their hands."

Follow me on Twitter: @marcodellacava