Google Cardboard app offers magical mystery tour of Beatles' recording studio - CNET

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On any given day, the area near the zebra crossing outside London's Abbey Road Studios is chockablock full of tourists waiting in tu to re-create the iconic cover shot of the famous Beatles album.

Now those tourists can wander into the recording facility, take a seat behind a drum kit and make like Ringo.

Well, sort of.

In a blog post Wednesday, Google unveiled a new virtual-reality app for Android phones that lets people take a virtual tour of Abbey Road alongside Giles Martin, son of recently deceased Beatles producer George Martin. All they need is the app and one of Google's Cardboard VR headsets.

With Facebook's Oculus Rift headset now on sale, many industry watchers expect the VR experiences available in our homes to step up a notch. But with high prices and niche-gaming features, such headsets won't be available to all. Though they offer more-basic immersion and less-thrilling experiences, it's headsets like Cardboard that may well bring VR into the mainstream.