You can now experience the New York Times in virtual reality. The VR project announced last month in partnership with Google has already gone live with initial stories. The content is available through the NYT VR app, which you can get on Google Play or in Apple's App Store.
Free Google Cardboards
You can view the content in two dimensions, but for the full experience you’ll need a cardboard VR viewer. Simply strap a Google cardboard onto your phone, load up the content and you’ll be immersed in a 3D world.
You can buy a Google cardboard viewer for $20, but all print subscribers to the New York Times will receive a free viewer with their Sunday supplement this weekend. Times Insider digital subscribers will receive promotional codes via marketing emails that can be redeemed for free cardboard viewers.
The viewer is basically a flat piece of cardboard with some lenses and magnets, but when you fold it up and pop your phone inside, it works surprisingly well as a virtual reality headset.
The Displaced
Initially, the VR app is displaying a New York Times magazine story called ‘The Displaced.' The story follows three children driven from their homes by the refugee crises occuring alongside three separate wars. The children are 12-year-old Hannah from Lebanon, 9-year-old Chuol from South Sudan and 11-year-old Oleg from the Ukraine.
The stories are told as videos, but instead of just watching, the user can look around the environment in a 360 degree view. Chuol and his family were forced to leave their village and are now living in a swamp. The video follows Chuol wading through a swamp in a wooden canoe, but wearing the 3D goggles it is as if you are sitting in the canoe. Users can look around the swamp, up to the sky or down to the water lilies floating below the boat, by just turning your head.
Similarly you can follow Oleg and Hannah as they run around buildings destroyed by artillery. The 11 minute video still follows a linear path - as the story progresses you are transported into each different scene - and subtitles narrate the story.
New Storytelling Medium
It a really interesting look at a new medium that could change the way we tell stories. Certainly the VR format gives the viewer a much better understanding of what life is like for these children than traditional a video would.
The footage is created by complex rigs, containing lots of cameras filming in every direction. The film was created in conjunction with the VR production company VRSE.works.
There are four other shorter videos users can watch through the app, including sponsored content from General Electric and the carmaker Mini, as well as another story called 'Walking New York'. The latter follows artist JR as he takes photos along the length of Broadway in Manhattan for a magazine feature that was published a few weeks ago.
If you don’t have a cardboard viewer you can still watch the videos in 2D. By tilting and moving your phone you can navigate around the scene, but it’s not quite the same.
It wasn’t the only VR news released this week. YouTube, which of course is part of Google (or now Alphabet), also had a big launch. Every single video on the site is now viewable on Cardboard by clicking a special icon on the Android smartphone app. YouTube is also making all 360 degree VR videos hosted on the platform available in 3D, including the New York Times' 'The Displaced' content.
If you really want to, you can view ‘The Displaced’ on a desktop and navigate around the scenes using your mouse, but it’s clearly not how the footage was designed to be viewed.
