While more luxurious VR units have head straps and headphones, etc. Google Cardboard is often meant to simply be held up to the eyes for short, controlled bursts of VR. Since it does not have positional tracking, the user laying prone is ideal for Cardboard, since the range of movement is limited and not likely to get out of sync with the VR experience due to users shifting in their seats, trying to move their heads closer to objects, and so on.

For this reason and because I like to be a bit weird, I’ve started my first VR projects with the sky as the canvas. One of VR’s strengths is its ability to convey scale, and there are few environments so vast as the sky. One of its drawbacks is that small details are often lost, which is also helped by focusing on the sky, rather than nearby objects and environments.

My first project has a working title of “Forehead Fireworks” and is a VR experience of the user laying on a bed in the middle of a grassy field at night. The user is able to fire colorful fireworks out of their foreheads into the starry sky.

The first priority for this project will be to create as convincing and engaging a skyscape as I am able given the technical limitations of the mobile platform, which I will expand upon in a later post.