The New York Times has released to the public that they are launching a virtual reality app called NYT VR for iPhone and Android. The platform already had thousands of 360-degree videos, where people could use a mouse or touch gestures to look in different directions inside the video. You won’t have to travel to war-torn places for this, thanks to the New York Times’ new virtual reality app that transports the readers(virtually only) to the story locales.
Advertisement
Where VR is often gimmicky, the Times’ take is powerful.
The films, seen through Google’s Cardboard VR headset, show the astounding journalism that is commonly associated with the New York Times, but a few viewers found that one of the films, subtitled in English because the cast were not English speakers caused a hard strain in the eyes and made the experience hard to enjoy. Now, with the NYT turning to VR as an extension of its stories, a larger shift seems underway.
Those scenes might have been less biologically troubling had I been using higher quality virtual reality hardware. While it’s little more than a novelty right now, it is a neat way to isolate your viewing experience and have a mini-home theatre to yourself. Live demonstrations involving crowd VR experiences will more likely be the exception rather than the rule. However, with this technology comes new dangers. As I said before, it’s partly about reaching out to an audience that may never have bothered to even give VR headsets a try. Centered around a cover story in the newspaper on the global refugee crisis, this video tells the story of three children driven from their homes. Its story of “The Displaced”-created in cooperation with VR production company Vrse-represents an intimate documentary journalism experience which follows each refugee child through their daily acts of survival and play in Ukraine, Syria and South Sudan”.
Simply called NYT VR, the app is the publisher’s first serious foray into immersive storytelling.
Advertisement
“Other news events, for example war footage, might be better consumed via traditional media”, he said. VR content, or a “360 video”, available on YouTube can be viewed on a smartphone while wearing a Google Cardboard device.
