Are there already easy ways to play VR with Cardboard?

Question

Android

Virtual reality is discussed every day by one or another developer or large corporations, something is being purchased somewhere, news is everywhere, hype about these issues .... But, where are the virtual reality products themselves? This refers to actually used, used programs, games, etc. at least for the public Cardboard?
There is a dime a dozen of all kinds of rubbish, but is there already something really impressive, not demanding on resources (this is the most important, because I would even play in the 1993 DUM if I had such an opportunity), which does not bother after several attempts?
Why did the question arise - what problems prevent the emergence of something cool related to Virtual Reality? After all, everything is already there - powerful computers, phones are more powerful than computers in 2005, but what's there - flash drives are already more powerful than computers in 2010! They came up with the Cardboard - I was impressed (a couple of years ago), after a while I bought a Cardboard made of plastic (terribly uncomfortable, the lenses fall out just at the level when the clearest focus), I tested all sorts of demos, sometimes it seems to be very good. But where are the real full-fledged applications ??? All that we managed to find is in appearance - student sketches, which have nothing to do with the modern gaming industry.
So, what we wanted to see in order to understand that there are movements, and even serious ones:
1. A complete first-person game for Cardboard on Android that does not need to be launched through the Cardboard launcher.
2. The game can independently divide the screen into two parts and give out at least mirror images (not stereo), but stereo is better. There are adjustments to the convexity of the picture for the most pleasant perception.
3. Camera control (gyroscope, accelerometer) can be easily calibrated to your phone. And do not use those that the developer himself has set up for himself.
4. As a manipulator, you can use not only a branded thread, but something universal, such as a mouse, a bluetooth joystick, or (even better) another smartphone configured as a 3D joystick.
5. something else important that I haven't thought of yet.
Agree - it is affordable applications for the "Cardboard" of mass use that will radically elevate the VR industry! Because not everyone will immediately go to buy expensive prichendals of unknown use.

Answer 1

Agree - it is affordable applications for the "Cardboard" of mass use that will radically elevate the VR industry! Because not everyone will immediately go to buy expensive prichendals of unknown use.

I disagree, because virtual reality on smartphones is a low-quality product that no one needs, because it cannot completely immerse the brain in the virtual space and does not give the effect that productive specialized devices give.
Maximum - a smartphone for augmented reality.
Really, you can see virtual reality only on powerful video cards and on devices specialized for this.
The games are ready, only now they will be on game consoles and helmets, which will be released (as they say) at the end of this year.
As soon as the VR industry wins the audience and smartphones in terms of performance will pull virtual worlds (even streaming ones), then there will be demand.
In the meantime, people will buy

expensive prichendals of unknown use

All of the above could be squeezed into one sentence:
There is an artificial retention of technologies for mass consumption products due to the current demand for current ones (long obsolete), which ultimately contributes to income growth with minimal labor costs for the production of analogues along a well-established line.
And if people are still paying the same amount for a long-outdated product (games) - why refuse to use the old pipeline and waste money inventing something new? Loss of energy - no one needs.
PS: This game is Elite Dangerous: Horizons - Season Pass! (space simulator) - supports OculusRift.
PS2: app.yesvr.ru => ru.vrpax.com
PS3: info.vrstorecardboard.ru

Answer 2

Agree - it is affordable applications for the "Cardboard" of mass use that will radically elevate the VR industry!

Actually, it's never true. Cardboard and similar "boxes" have existed for several years, but they have not caused any revolution and special interest, except for experimental ones. For example, I have had this cardboard for about a year, and during all this time I have been using it for about 30 minutes at the most. But why? BECAUSE THIS IS JUST A PHONE BOX and it doesn't matter if it's made of cardboard or "cool" plastic, I don't want to abuse my phone for hours for a dubious pseudo-immersion, because this is a perversion.
Speaking of perversions and the actual topic of the question: as far as I know, there are no full-fledged games, but it is possible to use the phone as a headset for a PC, not without dancing with tambourines, of course, but it works. I myself had the opportunity to test THIS on Fallout 4 ... yes, it was pretty funny, but again, this is just an experiment and there is no desire to spend more than 15 minutes on it.
Watch all kinds of videos about HTC Vive better and you will understand that a full-fledged VR or, as you say, "expensive prichendaly" is not a stupid box with a screen, but a whole stack of technologies that provides ample opportunities (by current standards) for immersion and interaction with the virtual environment:
I will only agree that in the next couple of years, VR headsets will not really become widespread due to rather serious requirements for hardware, but such is progress, not all at once.

Answer 3

Are there easy ways to play VR with Cardboard?

With Cardboard no, with Gear VR yes. Samsung has the most polished VR experience right now: put the phone in a helmet, put it on your head, that's it. The mobile itself will guess that it was inserted into the helmet, the sensor in the helmet itself recognizes that you are wearing a helmet, and the virtual environment with the store and library will launch itself, and then you can do whatever you want: play, watch movies, download applications. On a cardboard, this is not even close, because it's just playing with cardboard, not a platform. Oculus and Samsung have made a platform, so they are doing well.
Let's talk about mobile VR. First of all, modern mobile phones lack the performance to show an interesting picture. In order for the player not to get sick, the game needs to keep a stable 90 FPS. More is better, but there are no such screens yet. One of the most beautiful games for mobile phones today is Land's End . The developers of the game had to use low-poly models, remove all light sources and use a bunch of optimization tricks to achieve such a screen refresh rate. And all because you need to render the picture with two eyes and with a high resolution.
Let's assume that the hardware problem has been solved and all mobile phones now have a top-end Core i7. The software problem remains. No one designed mobile operating systems to run VR on them. Accordingly, access to the hardware is provided through a bunch of abstraction layers, in each of which schedulers and managers are poked. Passing through all layers leads to an increase in the "motion-to-photon" interval: a person turns his head, motion sensors register the turn, the program calculates a new picture, the picture is sent to the screen. At each of these stages, there are delays, and this applies not only to information from the accelerometer, even banal taps on the screen can get into the application with a delay of tens of milliseconds. The situation is similar on PC. Linux has always been bad in this regard, Valve is trying to fix the situation there with Nvidia and AMD. And in Windows, in the last couple of years, the kernel has been greatly altered, in the latest versions of the OS, everything is pretty good.
Suppose that these problems have been solved, what else is missing? Not enough input devices. If you insert a mobile phone into a helmet, then there are not many ways to interact with the game world. You can turn your head, give voice commands, etc. ... everything. Cardboard still has a button, and Gear VR has a primitive trackpad. Voice control disappears, technologies are not the same. There is no positional tracking on mobile phones yet and is not expected, as a result, there remains a kind of periscope with a button. How many games can be made with such controls? Not much.
In addition to these problems, there are many others that also contribute. Therefore, it turns out that "everywhere there is news, excitement", and there are few games. Nevertheless, there are games and new ones appear, so you just need to wait a little longer.