Last month, The New York Times announced that it would be shipping Google Cardboard virtual reality headsets to all its print subscribers (and shipping redeemable coupons to a few of its digital-only subscribers). Those headsets won’t start showing up until this weekend, but the NYT VR mobile app is now available on Apple’s App Store and the Google Play store. Viewers without Google Cardboard will be able to view its contents as flatscreen 360-degree videos, and a modified desktop version is also available.
You can download The New York Times’ virtual reality journalism app today
is a senior tech and policy editor focused on online platforms and free expression. Adi has covered virtual and augmented reality, the history of computing, and more for The Verge since 2011.
The New York Times plans to make NYT VR a hub for future virtual reality projects, but for now, it features two videos. The first is a version of “Walking New York,” which the Times first unveiled earlier this year. The second is “The Displaced,” a newly released 11-minute documentary about three refugee children in Ukraine, Lebanon, and South Sudan. Like “Walking New York” and the UN-backed refugee mini-documentary “Clouds over Sidra,” “The Displaced” was produced by virtual reality studio Vrse.
In this case, "The Displaced" also complements a series of written profiles about each of the children, set to run in The New York Times magazine this weekend.
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