Image: Google
Your Android smartphone is now a VR camera.Google today released a new Android app called Cardboard Camera that lets users take VR photos with their smartphone, which are then viewable in the company's Cardboard VR viewer. The app builds upon technology that Google rolled out a few years ago that let users take 360-degree panorama photos.I used the app just now to take a VR photo of the Vice offices, and it does exactly what is says on the tin. You hold your smartphone vertically, select whether or not you also want to include sound, then slowly drag twirl the phone around in a circle. An on-screen indicator helps you keep the photo steady enough so as not to ruin the resulting VR photo.Viewing photos is just as easy: You merely insert the smartphone into the Cardboard viewer, and can then pan around and view the photos in all directions (though in my testing the distance you could pan the viewer up and down was rather limited).While a fun way to introduce a mass audience to VR content creations, the resulting photos are less immersive than what you'd get from a professional VR photography setup, a subject that Motherboard has spent a great deal of time testing in recent weeks.One thing to note is that VR photos taken with Cardboard camera cannot currently be shared online, although Google tells us this functionality is coming soon. Google is also planning to develop an iOS version, but there's no timetable for that to happen.