Google Cardboard vs Oculus Go

I was wondering if anyone has experience developing for the Oculus Go.

At the moment I'm in pre-production for a (storytelling serious game) Cardboard title but we are strongly considering switching to the Go.
In the Cardboard environment, we would heavily rely on prerendered images, whereas developing for the Go offers more flexibility where it comes to using realtime 3d environments.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

 

I don't see why Go vs. Cardboard should make any difference in how you render. The computing power of the Go is very similar to the kinds of mobile phone that would probably be used with Cardboard.

The big difference is the controller. Cardboard has only a single input button, and only gaze-based tracking. Go (and Gear, which is basically the same thing) has a separate 3DOF controller with several buttons and a trackpad. This is a huge difference, opening up all sorts of interactions that are otherwise not possible. (For the user, the differences are even greater: Go is absolutely frictionless, while phone headsets are fiddly.)

I definitely suggest you get a Go, and if you have to choose between that and Cardboard, develop for Go. But if your game design works with Cardboard, then consider just doing both. The only difference is that on Go, you have the 3DOF pointer rather than gaze-based pointing.

 

In addition to what's mentioned above you should consider market size and more importantly active users. It's easy to get fooled by the fact that cardboard viewers have shipped more than Go/GearVr. However if you look at any recent cardboard title on Google Play you'll see that the download numbers are disappointing (even the better rated ones having only a thousand downloads). The Oculus Store for Go/GearVr on the other hand there are even brand new titles that have tons of reviews. I can't find any more up to date info but gear vr had long since passed 1 million active users in 2016. The market is much bigger on the Go/GearVr. There are tons of cardboard headsets that were used and now are collecting dust.

As previously said for a storytelling game it makes no difference from a technical standpoint. Both platforms are perfectly capable of 3D realtime environments.

 

This is interesting stuff. Are there data available on active market sizes for the various mobile VR platforms? I guess ideally including Cardboard, Gear VR, DayDream, Oculus Go (others?). If not, any feelings for relative scales? In an ideal world, any info about market segments?

I'm started with cardboard (lowest common denominator) but Google VR API allows pretty seamless runtime use of DayDream pointer for simple point and click use. I now wonder how hard it would be to add similar capability for Gear + Go ... vs. discarding lowest common denominator and using more 6DOF stuff.

Thoughts welcome

 

Other than the one 2016 Gear VR reporting on the mobile side, I don't know of any official reports (unlike PC side where the data is more readily published). You can do a crude approximation by looking at VR only titles (this is important because ones that also exist outside of VR will be distorted) and looking at the reviews or downloads.

It's very clear that the order is GearVR/Go -> Cardboard -> Daydream (on the software side not hardward side) but I don't know of specific numbers. Daydream is unfortunately in trouble and hopefully the Solo will turn things around but I'm not that hopeful. Google bought a bunch of exclusives for quality titles (Eclipse Edge of Light, Virtual VR, etc.) and since the play store publishes download ranges you can see how bad they are.

VVR is a good example since it was a timed exclusive for the last few years and only came to the Oculus side within the last few weeks. After a few years VVR has only 5,000 downloads for daydream and 300ish reviews. VVR in a few weeks has almost as many reviews on the Go. That's pretty abysmal for a quality flagship title on Daydream. Google seems to be neglecting it's ecosystem as well. As good as the hardware may be if you don't have devolpers on board you don't have a shot and with revenue that low, I don't see them sticking around.

 

Thanks a lot for the feedback everyone.

We decided to continue with the Oculus Go, it offers a bit more flexibility in our case. A major factor for us is that the game will be distributed to high schools only. With cardboard, students themselves had to download the game in the classroom so we were limited by availability and acceptable download size (...and time). The Oculus will be distributed with the software preinstalled so there won't be any surprises in the classroom.

I'm not familiar with developing for the 'Go' but I'm not expecting major difficulties. Production will start around this September so I may post some updates later this year.

Cheers