Just about everyone agrees virtual and augmented reality are going to be important. The tech already sort of works, and will get better quickly from here. Gadgets offering the ability to truly feel as if you've been transported to another place, or to superimpose the digital world on the real one, will be transformative. Somehow. Eventually. For some reason. No one knows exactly what AR and VR will be good for, or when. They just know it's coming.

This week at CES, Google's partners are announcing two new cameras that support the VR180 standard, which refers to a new way of capturing 180-degree panoramic images.

Clay Bavor, the leader of Google's virtual reality team, is trying to strike a difficult balance: Bavor and his team are trying to build products that people will buy and use now, while preparing for the future, who knows how long from now, when all this world-changing stuff starts to happen. Right now, before all the tech is ready and everyone's used to it, coming up with things people want is tricky. (Just ask the folks at Oculus and Vive.) But recently, Bavor says he's found something that might be special: VR as a way to capture and relive important memories in your life.

Eyes on Eyes

This week at CES, Google's partners are announcing two new cameras that support the VR180 standard, which refers to a new way of capturing 180-degree panoramic images. Lenovo's making the Mirage Camera, designed to go along with the Mirage Solo headset, a completely wireless and self-sufficient Daydream VR headset. Yi, another Chinese manufacturer, is making a similar camera called the Horizon.

Yi's Horizon camera is another VR180 camera built in partnership with Google's virtual reality team. Google

Both are basically just point-and-shoots with two lenses on the front rather than one. They capture 4K, three-dimensional video that you can watch on YouTube, in Google Photos, or in any VR headset. They're not the highest-tech VR things you've ever seen, but they might be the easiest to understand. Which is precisely the point.

"People love going places," Bavor says. "They love going places." Google's Earth VR and Street View apps are both hugely popular among VR users, and Expeditions, a virtual field-trip platform, has proven popular in schools. It's not surprising, then, that the Google VR team has spent a lot of time thinking about how to help people capture places in VR for themselves and others to visit again later. "But when we looked at how people use their cameras, it's very seldom that it's like, 'Let me take an aesthetically beautiful, well-composed photo,'" Bavor says. "It's about remembering a moment." The photos, he says, aren't even really the point. It's about what happens when you look at them, the memories you get to re-live. And when you watch them back, the stereoscopic and super-wide footage feels so much more immersive than any photograph you've ever seen.

Bringin' Us Back

Both new VR180 cameras can livestream directly to YouTube, or save your memories to Google Photos. The Photos integration was particularly important, Bavor says, "because we see this being such a strong product for memory capture. And memories live in your own private repository of photos until you decide otherwise." If you want a clue of where this is all going, look at the Pensieve, the swirling store of memories that comes up repeatedly in Harry Potter. "We've got a lot of work to do to get there fully," Bavor says, "but I think there's something universal about memory and nostalgia and a desire to reflect on, step back into, be a part of, memories or experiences or time with people you care about."