Today, we’re releasing the Cardboard open source project to let the developer community continue to build Cardboard experiences and add support to their apps for an ever increasing diversity of smartphone screen resolutions and configurations.

While we’ve seen overall usage of Cardboard decline over time and we’re no longer actively developing the Google VR SDK, we still see consistent usage around entertainment and education experiences, like YouTube and Expeditions, and want to ensure that Cardboard’s no-frills, accessible-to-everyone approach to VR remains available. With Cardboard and the Google VR software development kit (SDK), developers have created and distributed VR experiences across both Android and iOS devices, giving them the ability to reach millions of users. In many cases, it provided access to VR to people who otherwise couldn’t have afforded it.

From a giveaway at Google I/O to more than 15 million units worldwide, Cardboard has played an important role in introducing people to VR through experiences like YouTube and Expeditions. Posted by Jeffrey Chen, Product Manager, AR & VR Five years ago, we launched Google Cardboard-a simple cardboard viewer that anyone can use to experience virtual reality (VR).

Download google cardboard design lab