Google’s VR painting app is getting axe

The end of Tilt Brush development is about to happen by Google. Tilt Brush, the virtual reality painting app, is one of the most popular VR applications, and now Google is making it open source. In 2015, Google acquired Tilt Brush after its launch for Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, and it was soon folded into the more extensive VR plans of the company, such as Daydream headsets and Google Cardboard.

The main feature of Tilt Brush is 3- dimensional painting in VR, however, the application got fascinating updates over its residency at Google, including an open-source toolkit offering the ability to export Tilt Brush drawings for animation and multiplayer support. With this recent announcement, that advancement is reaching an end, and Tilt Brush’s future support is in the community’s hand that uses it yet.

In a series of discontinued Google VR projects, Tilt Brush is the latest one. During the launch of the Pixel 4, Daydream VR headsets were discontinued, and in 2019, the Jump camera and video service were 86’ed, and Google Cardboard got the same open-source farewell in the same year and also into the nightfall in 2020, VR field trip software Expeditions headed out. The surviving projects include VR versions of Google Earth and YouTube and Owlchemy Labs which is a game development studio.

Should you need to take your hand at fiddling with open-source Tilt Brush, the company is giving a point-by-point directions on the best way to modify those missing features in the application. Now on GitHub, one can access Tilt Brush code, but Google states that a few features are required to be taken out from the open-source launch due to licensing restrictions. Moreover, you can still download Tilt Brush from anywhere as it’s available on all of the significant VR app stores.

Alphabet and Google are no strangers to slaughtering off previous sweethearts and other people’s current ones. But moving things to open source appears to be an important tradeoff for the individuals who actually use these products each day.