Google’s Clay Bavor on Daydream View, YouTube, & AI in VR

On October 4th, Google revealed Daydream View, which is their reference design for their mobile VR headset. Google CEO Sandar Pichai also announced the first Daydream-ready phone designed called Pixel, which also has native hardware support for their artificial intelligent Google Assistant technology. Pichai emphasized that Google and the wider tech industry are moving from mobile-first to AI-first, and so they showed off more demos of their AI conversational interface with Google Home.

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I had a chance to go hands-on with the Google Home, Google Pixel, and Google’s Daydream View devices, and then had an opportunity to sit down with Google Vice President Clay Bavor, who is heading up Google’s VR initiatives. We talked about Daydream View & the 3DOF controller, the special optimizations they made to be able to seamlessly stream 360 videos on YouTube, their Streetview implementation and future of Earth VR, and how AI and conversational interfaces will start to be integrated into Daydream. We also talked about how Google Jump was their first initiative after Cardboard to improve upon the stereo 360 video quality, the future of digital lightfields, and Google’s push for open ecosystems and their support for WebVR.

I also have a chance to give some more of my hands-on impressions of Daydream View, and add some of my thoughts and analysis for how Google’s VR immersive computing platform is starting to converge with their AI initiatives.

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Music: Fatality & Summer Trip