Google Cardboard Becomes Open Source

Posted Nov 7, 2019 by in: Virtual Reality

After five years in the market, Google has decided to release its Cardboard project to open source.

On Google’s Developer Blog, it was announced that 15 million units have been shipped to date and it had a solid reputation for providing Virtual Reality to those who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford it.

VR experience have been shipped across both Android and iOS devices with Cardboard and the Google VR software development kit (SDK), and although the usage of the product has since declined over time. Google is also no longer actively developing the Google VR SDK either.

Google will release the libraries for developers to build their own Cardboard apps for both iOS and Android to put out VR experience for viewers. The open source project also includes the APIs for head tracking, lens distortion rendering and input handling, as well as an Android QR code library to pair any viewer without depending on the Cardboard app.

Users interested in getting involved can head over to the Cardboard GitHub repo to access the source code and latest release.