Google is moving full-steam ahead with virtual reality, calling on developers to create apps for its new Daydream VR platform and promising Daydream-ready handsets by year's end.

"We are working with a number of smartphone manufacturers to create a specification for Daydream-ready phones," the company said in a blog post. "These smartphones enable VR experiences with high-performance sensors for smooth, accurate head tracking, fast response displays to minimize blur, and powerful mobile processors."

The phones will tap into VR mode in Android N, which Google called "a set of powerful optimizations."

But Google also created a reference design for a headset and controller, so hardware companies can build their own. "And, yes we're building one too," Google teased. Check out a sneak peek of what that would entail in the video below.

Hardware is nice, but you need things to do inside that virtual world. "The most important part of virtual reality is what you experience," Google acknowledged.

To that end, the Google VR SDKs for Unity and Android now support Daydream. Those with a Nexus 6P can also use the Android N Developer Preview 3 as a Daydream developer kit.

Google has been working on VR-related projects for several years now. We first got a glimpse of its efforts at Google I/O 2014, which included the launch of Google Cardboard. Then, at last year's I/O, Google introduced Jump, an open-source model that utilizes 16 video cameras placed on a circular rig to capture immersive content, which can then be seamlessly stitched together with remote computing power, bringing the power of VR video creation to the masses.

Since then, partners like Paramount Pictures, The New York Times, and Discovery Communications have taken Jump for a spin. And now, Google is teaming up with China's Yi Technology on a rig based around its new 4K Action Cam, which arrives later this year. Google is also working with IMAX on "a very high-end cinema-grade Jump camera."

But VR is not just for developers and movie studios. At I/O 2015, Google also showed off Expeditions, which brings VR into classrooms with the help of Cardboard. During today's I/O presentation, Google said more than 1 million students from over 11 countries have gone on a VR Expedition—from Buckingham Palace and the Great Barrier Reef to Dubai's Burj Khalifa.