Google Rumored to unveil it's VR Headset in I/O 2017

At this year's Google I/O event, Qualcomm announced its collaborative design with Google to create a standalone VR headset based on the Daydream VR platform.

Google 's vice president of virtual and augmented reality Clay Bavor says the key technology here is the use of sensors, instead of external cameras or trackers, that makes the experience more realistic.

"Daydream will soon also support a new category of VR devices, which we call standalone VR headsets", Google explained in its blog post.

This time previous year, Google introduced Daydream, a VR platform for Android devices that was built right into Android Nougat and supported by Google's own viewer hardware, the Daydream View. The report claims that the new VR device will be able to run independent of a mobile or desktop computing system, but it is unclear whether it will run Android or any other operating system. They are free-form and wireless, yet still capable of providing full 360 degree tracking using what Google calls WorldSense.

That's a big difference from some existing VR headsets, such as the Samsung Gear and Google's own previous headset, which are basically fancy cases with special lenses that a user slides a phone into. On the other side are head-mounted displays (HMDs) that are required to be tethered to a PC, such as the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and any of the Windows Mixed Reality HMDs that are coming later this year. This is enabled by sensors on the outside of the device, aiming to help you feel like you're actually in the virtual world.

Google worked with Qualcomm to develop the design for the standalone headset.

Revealing the news at its Google I/O developer conference in California yesterday, Google said that HTC VIVE and Lenovo are both working on devices.

"We've got to remove more of the friction in using these devices".

Google also announced that Expeditions VR, the platform that lets students take virtual "field trips", will roll out to some schools through a Pioneer program this fall.