Google Street View just got full Cardboard VR support on iOS and Android

Google Cardboard just became a lot more fun for the geographically inclined. Today Google announced that its Cardboard virtual reality headset now lets you look at any Street View images through the dedicated Street View app for iOS and Android.

“Finally, to help bring you to more places, you can now explore Google Street View in Cardboard. So, download the updated Google Street View app for Android or iOS, and grab your Cardboard to immerse yourself in destinations around the world,” Google “stereoscopic sightseer” Brandon Wuest wrote in a blog post on the news.

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Previously Google had brought limited Street View capability to Cardboard users through the Cardboard app. Google quietly added Cardboard support in the Street View app last week but didn’t announce the update until now.

Google has also taken steps to make Cardboard more accessible for people around the world. The app now works in more than 100 countries in 39 languages. People have installed Cardboard apps from Google Play more than 15 million times now, Wuest wrote.

The Cardboard software development kits (SDKs) for Android and Unity have both received updates. On Android, Google did “a major overhaul of the sensor fusion algorithms that integrate the signals from the gyroscope and accelerometer,” which should result in less drift, Wuest wrote. The Unity SDK now supports Metal rendering on iOS and multithreaded rendering on Android, as well as “a fully Unity-native distortion pass,” so developers don’t need to fuss with complicated plugins, he wrote.

The Google Cardboard documentation is now available in 10 languages, according to Wuest.

Cardboard apps can work with Google’s first-party Cardboard headset, as well as third-party models like Mattel’s View-Master.