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NYT VR: How to Experience a New Form of Storytelling From The Times
Today, The New York Times takes a step into virtual reality. NYT VR is a mobile app that can be used — along with your headphones and optionally a cardboard viewing device — to simulate richly immersive scenes from across the globe.
To start, The Times Magazine presents three portraits of children driven from their homes by war and persecution — an 11-year-old boy from eastern Ukraine named Oleg, a 12-year-old Syrian girl named Hana and a 9-year-old South Sudanese boy named Chuol.
“This new filmmaking technology enables an uncanny feeling of connection with people whose lives are far from our own,” writes Jake Silverstein, editor of the magazine.
How do I watch?
If you have an iPhone, you can find the NYT VR app in the App Store.
If you have an Android phone, download it from Google Play.
You can use the app on its own. But the experience is even better with a special virtual reality viewer. Thanks to a partnership with Google, we will be sending free Google Cardboard VR viewers to all domestic New York Times home delivery subscribers who receive the Sunday edition. You should receive your Google Cardboard with your Sunday newspaper by November 8, 2015.
Times Insider subscribers who have chosen to receive marketing emails will also receive promotional codes via email that can be redeemed for free Cardboard viewers.
You can also buy a Cardboard viewer here.
The stories
War has driven 30 million children from their homes. These are the stories of three of them. (To see the virtual-reality films, download the NYT VR app using one of the links above.)
Nearly 60 million people are currently displaced from their homes.
At 12, she has lived one-quarter of her life in a debilitating state of suspension.
At 9, without his parents, he was forced to flee to the swamps.
At 11, he is living in the ruins of his former life.
In the NYT VR app, you can also watch a virtual-reality film, “Walking New York,” about the making of a Times Magazine cover with the artist JR.
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Explore The New York Times Magazine
The ‘Colorblindness’ Trap: Nikole Hannah-Jones examines how the fall of affirmative action may be viewed as part of a 50-year campaign to undermine the progress of the civil rights movement.
Deathbed Visions: Researchers are documenting the illusions seen by the dying, a phenomenon that seems to help them, as well as those they leave behind.
The Mad Perfumer of Parma: Hilde Soliani, the creator of fantastical perfumes, makes feral scents that evoke everything from oysters to opera houses.
Mona Island’s Terrifying Allure: Here’s why immigrants, seekers and pilgrims have been drawn for centuries to the treacherous shores of the remote island near Puerto Rico.
Creature Comforts: How exactly did pets take over our world? A writer spent a week at some luxury dog “hotels” with his goldendoodle to find out.
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