Cardboard Camera Breathes VR life Into Smartphone Photos

I must be honest. I’ve never used the Google Cardboard camera myself, or seen it in action, and I’m not a particularly keen advocate of Virtual Reality. Which kind of explains my scepticism about Google’s low-cost device.

But I do salute its low-fi approach and potential ingenuity, and it does seem a good fit with Gadget Master. More importantly, there is new functionality with the new Cardboard Camera app for Android.

Apparently you now just have to move your phone in a circular fashion and when the photo is later seen inside the viewer it will come to life as a "VR photo", according to Google.

These are described as "three-dimensional panoramas" with slightly different views for each eye. The idea is that near things look nearer and far things further distant. The key point is that you can "look around" to explore the image in multiple directions.
Carlos Hernandez, Software Engineer for Cardboard Camera at Google introduces the app on the official Google blog. He writes:

Cardboard Camera turns the smartphone in your pocket into a virtual reality (VR) camera. It’s simple to take a photo: just hold out your phone and move it around you in a circle. Later, when you place your phone inside a Google Cardboard viewer, you'll get to experience something new: a VR photo.

You can find the Cardboard Camera on Google Play. It requires Android 4.4 and up.