Despite the ephemeral nature of its hardware, Google Cardboard VR headset has become a major ongoing project for the company. Among other things, the board now supports 360-degree videos from YouTube, experimental Spotlight Stories, and an educational program called Expeditions. We learned yesterday that the company has appointed a development of virtual reality. Today, Google added a new feature to the cardboard platform itself :. spatial audio, producing more sophisticated and realistic soundscapes for VR experiences
spatial audio is exactly what it sounds like: audio that sounds like it comes not only from different sides of your headphones but from specific points . A phone can sound convincingly behind you, for example, or the birds can sing above. Google's new software development kit will allow people to make Google experience cardboard specify the positions of sounds, and the characteristics of their environments. If you hold the same conversation in a forest compared to a spaceship, said Google product manager VR Nathan Martz, it would sound "fundamentally different" - and so would its virtual representation. Developers will be able to define the size of the space and the materials they are made of, as they could build a level in a video game.
This is obviously not a change in hardware from Google, which is even a cardboard box with lenses, but it is a potentially important change. virtual images twinning with virtual sounds equally convincing was a major priority for enterprises as Oculus, which added its space in one of his helmet last year of prototypes. Sound is a powerful way to propose a framework, even when graphics next to her are simple - which, on a mobile phone, they must often be. "While people tend to focus a lot on visual RV, they will begin to focus more on audio," Martz said. "I think we will see some really cool applications developers."
