Google wants to make it easier to create virtual reality videos and to find virtual reality content to watch on YouTube.

Through a project called Jump, the technology giant is looking to make it easier to record, process, and watch videos in virtual reality. It has designed a rig that will allow people to record 360- degree video. This can't be done just with a regular camera phone - it requires 16 cameras operating in unison. People will be able to build their own rigs, but Google has also worked with hardware developer GoPro, which will sell its own Jump-ready camera outfit. Starting this summer, Google will give a select group of developers access to its software for stitching the video from all these cameras together into a single experience.

The finished video will be available to view on Cardboard viewers through YouTube (they really are made from cardboard). Google is also pushing virtual reality as an educational experience, through a project called Expeditions that delivers sets of Cardboard viewers to classrooms. Teachers can then guide students through, say, a tour of the Great Wall of China on a tablet controlling the entire fleet of devices.

A rig holds 16 GoPro cameras designed for Google Jump, which is intended to drive a new type of YouTube focused on virtual reality. JUSTIN SULLIVAN

Google is trying to keep itself at the center of any shift in user tastes toward virtual reality content, while also trying to help drive reasons for people to adopt the technology.

Obviously, Google would like to use virtual reality as a way to encourage more people to use its Android software which it developed and dominates the mobile phone market.. But it also announced that the new version of its virtual reality software development kit can now be used to design apps for Apple devices, too.

Google isn't the only one betting that virtual reality will be a major new way that people use computers. Facebook bought Oculus VR for $2 billion last spring, and both Sony and Microsoft are working on their own virtual or augmented reality headsets. For its part, Google has poured a half-billion dollars into Magic Leap, an augmented reality company secretive enough that even new employees don't get to see demos until they've signed their contracts.

Bloomberg