Google Daydream View virtual reality headset launches and it even has a reasonable pricetag

Your nerves not steely enough to swim with sharks in real life? The Taj Mahal simply too far from your sofa? Google hopes to entice you with the next best option.

It has now launched Daydream View, a £69 headset that immerses the wearer in a digital universe and aims to capture the mass market with affordable mobile virtual reality.

Apps include a 360-degree wade in London’s subterranean Victorian sewers, a chance to sign up for wizard lessons, and bunnies battling aliens in a VR narrated by Ethan Hawke.

The goggles give access to guided tours of world heritage sites, such as the Taj Mahal, with Street View enabling users to “visit over 70 countries and experience 150 tours of the world’s most amazing places”, Google says on its blog. YouTube can become “your own personal cinema”.

Daydream View, which pits Google against Samsung’s £80 Gear VR, works in conjunction with an Android app on a compatible high-end phone — such as Google’s new Pixel — which slots into the front of the headset.

A menu gives access to video, apps and games, such as Curiscope’s great white shark experience. Action is controlled via a handheld motion pointer with buttons, which has a speaker for sound effects and mimics movement. The user can “swing it like a bat or wave it like a wand”.

For one app, a tie-in with J K Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, the remote is a “magic wand” to cast spells as the user meets strange creatures.

Clay Bavor, Google’s vice-president of virtual reality, said the wearer can “teleport from anywhere to pretty much everywhere.”

Olivier Demangel, founder of virtual reality creators IVR Nation, said: “VR is going to change entertainment as well as advertising, design, architecture, medicine and social networks. I used to say, when VR tech matures, it’s going be more powerful than cocaine.”

He told design magazine Dezeen: “Probably the main problems will be addiction and isolation.”

Although Daydream View does not offer the powerful, seamless experience of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, it is several hundred pounds cheaper. Headsets are covered in soft, breathable fabric. They are reasonably comfortable but can let light in if the face seal is not good.