This site has been archived and remains strictly as a historical reference for developers who actively maintain apps built using the legacy Google VR SDK, which was last updated in 2019 and is no longer receiving updates.
  • All developers actively developing experiences for Google Cardboard should use the new open source Cardboard SDKs for iOS, Android NDK, and Unity XR Plugin. These new SDKs offer streamlined APIs, improved device compatibility, and built-in viewer profile QR code scanning.
  • The Daydream View VR headset is no longer available for purchase as of October 15, 2019. Existing apps on supported devices are unaffected for users who previously installed those applications. It is no longer possible to opt-in to Daydream distribution via Google Play.

Daydream Renderer demo

Performance is critical to VR apps but can be especially challenging on mobile GPUs. Many commonly available mobile shaders and per-pixel lighting solutions provide high quality results but perform poorly on mobile VR systems due to extremely high resolutions, rendering multiple views, distortion and general mobile performance issues.

This demo uses Daydream Renderer, a Unity rendering package that includes mobile-optimized custom lighting, shaders, and editing tools, to create a scene that showcases rendering effects that are typically difficult to achieve on mobile hardware.

You can learn more about Daydream Renderer here.

In this scene, we use many of the Daydream Renderer’s features, including per- pixel lighting, tangent-space normal maps, dynamic shadows, realtime specular highlights, and reflections.

Because baked static lighting in Daydream Renderer is vertex-based rather than lightmap based, the resolution of the light baker’s output is dependent on scene vertex density. The assets in the demo have even tessellation that supports fidelity of Daydream Renderer’s lighting features.