Three years ago, Google debuted Cardboard, a clever sub-$20 DIY kit that turned nearly any phone into a VR viewer. It was brilliantly simple -- so cheap and universal that The New York Times eventually gave it away for free to its print subscribers. And it worked as a smart counterpoint to the high-end PC-based VR hardware from Oculus, which had been acquired by Facebook just two months earlier.
What a difference three years makes. From those humble beginnings, Google is now pursuing a multifront war on the augmented and virtual reality front: its Daydream View VR headsets, introduced in 2016, turn phones into head-mounted VR viewers; a separate class of "Tango" phones incorporate advanced augmented reality cameras for overlaying digital objects onto the real world; and -- as of last week's IO developers conference -- a new standalone version of Daydream (no phone required!) is coming soon.
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