Google’s Daydream virtual reality specification boosts smartphone processor performance demands

As the old joke goes, “Virtual reality (VR) is the technology of the future — and it always will be.” However, after decades of existing more as an exciting possibility than a real, high-volume consumer product, VR finally seems to be having its moment, with promising developments that include the arrival of the Oculus Rift, Samsung’s Gear VR and Google’s Cardboard.

But a recent development could take the technology to a whole new level — potentially putting a VR platform into almost everyone’s pocket. Google, at its annual Google I/O developer festival this month, announced the Daydream platform, which goes far beyond Cardboard and turns each Android smartphone into the basis of a high-quality VR system.

“Google’s endorsement of VR on smartphones, and presumably on tablets, will move the technology into the Android-installed base, with hundreds of millions of devices within three years,” said Louis Ward, gaming research director at IDC. “We expect Apple to make a similar move within 18 months, so the majority of smartphones will have the VR feature built in.”

Daydream consists of multiple elements, including a VR mode built into the next generation of the Android operating system, a reference design for a headset, and a controller and apps. The platform also calls for significant changes to smartphones themselves, with the performance demands of VR mode requiring fast processors and other additional semiconductor devices.

“To create that kind of immersion to make your brain say, ‘Yep, I’m really somewhere else,’ you have to solve some really hard problems from all parts of the VR experience,” said Clay Bavor, vice president, virtual reality for Google, speaking at the Google I/O keynote. “You have to create a product that’s capable of rendering a very high frame rate and resolution. To make the experience really comfortable, you have to minimize motion-to-photon latency, which is the delay from when you move your head and when the picture updates to reflect that motion. And they need to solve for how you interact with things in VR.”

Bavor announced that Google has collaborated with smartphone makers and silicon suppliers to create a set of specifications for VR-enabled smart devices. Along with high-performance sensors and fast-response-time displays, the specifications call for powerful mobile processors.

While Google hasn’t released details on the specs yet, they seem likely to require a level of processing power not normally associated with smartphones.

“VR is a very demanding application for any device,” observed Tuong Huy Nguyen, principal research analyst at Gartner Inc. “The best evidence of this is the high-fidelity VR experiences you get with Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. To provide these types of experiences on these devices, they are necessarily tethered to high-end desktop PCs. So if you want to bring a similar experience into a completely portable and mobile, fit-in-your-pocket device, I would say processing power is a key component. Beyond that, some type of integration — perhaps a VR platform, or engine — at the chip level would make it that much more effective and efficient and to provide an immersive environment with good graphics, sound, and low latency.” 

With faster processors delivering a superior VR experience, expect silicon suppliers to offer their latest and greatest system-on-chip solutions — perhaps with some VR-specific enhancements in the graphics processing unit — to meet the demands of Daydream.

Bavor specifically mentioned that Daydream phones should be focused on reducing latency times to under 20 milliseconds. This will require the capability for single-buffered rendering.

With the first Daydream-compatible smartphones expected this fall, we shouldn’t have to wait long to see what the silicon providers have dreamed up for virtual reality.