![]() It feels like a standalone version of the conversational AI that’s coming to Home and Allo. At the event, Pichai demonstrated the assistant’s ability to parse context by asking it what movies were playing tonight, specifying that he wanted to bring the kids, and then buying tickets, all without leaving the app and more or less in the way you’d speak to a human. Sundar Pichai began I/O by showing off a next-generation Google Assistant, which feels more like a chat app than the search-based Google Now. ![]() Google’s assistant is getting smarter and more chatty Google hasn’t opened Home’s API to developers yet, so Home can’t communicate with as many outside services as Echo, but Google says those integrations will become possible as the platform develops. Home is built on the Chromecast standard, which lets it push media to other Cast-compatible speakers and screens, change temperature or lighting through Nest devices, and integrate with services like Spotify. Unlike Echo, it’s designed to be used with multiple devices in multiple rooms, so you can ask a single query and not have to worry about three different devices answering back. The device itself is a small cylinder with a rounded top and a speaker at the base, available in a number of different shells to match your decor. The obvious comparison is Amazon’s Echo, and Home will answer questions and execute commands in a similar way, relying on Google’s Assistant technology to make sense of the queries. The company also announced a new home assistant called Google Home, a small speaker with always-listening microphones that integrates into a broad range of services. Of course, Google actually makes its phone reference designs in the form of Nexus devices, so it's anyone's guess whether we'll see a real Google VR headset as Daydream evolves, or if we'll just keep getting more blueprints. ![]() Like with Android, Google is providing companies with a backbone of software while pointing them in a particular direction on the hardware side. (The company also showed a motion controller with a touchpad.) What's interesting here is that Google is approaching VR much like it originally approached Android, because the company also announced the Daydream initiative, a mobile VR platform that will be baked into Android N. Google showed off a reference design for a smartphone-powered VR headset that looks a lot like a smaller, cordless Oculus Rift. One of the rumors leading up to this year's I/O conference was that Google would announce its very own mid-tier VR headset - something more capable and polished than Cardboard, but more affordable and accessible than the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift. The company is also releasing reference designs for headsets as a way of encouraging phonemakers to get on board with the platform. Google says that those Daydream-ready phones will be available this fall, and that we can expect to see them from Samsung, HTC, LG, Huawei, and more. The biggest limitation for Daydream seems to be that it will only work on new phones that have special sensors and screens. Other companies, like The New York Times, HBO, Netflix, Ubisoft, and Electronic Arts are already developing for Daydream as well. There will be a home screen with apps (which looks a lot like the Gear VR's home screen, to be honest), and Google has apparently already created special VR versions of its own apps like YouTube, Street View, the Google Play Store, Play Movies, and Google Photos. It's a backbone of software inside Android N (simply known as "VR Mode") that provides users with an entire ecosystem to play around in. That means it's not going to compete with the likes of the PC-powered HTC Vive or Oculus Rift (at least not yet, anyway), but looks much more powerful than Cardboard and represents a huge step in the push to advance VR out of its early stages.įrom the sound of it, Daydream is a lot like Android for VR. It's called Daydream, and it's built on top of Android N. ![]() Google now has a mobile virtual reality platform. Daydream is Google’s VR platform of the future ![]()
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