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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.

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Some 30 million children are displaced. Chuol, 9, escaped into a vast swamp in South Sudan when fighters swept into his village.

“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.

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.

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.)

The Displaced: Introduction

Nearly 60 million people are currently displaced from their homes.

Lebanon: Hana’s Story

At 12, she has lived one-quarter of her life in a debilitating state of suspension.

South Sudan: Chuol’s Story

At 9, without his parents, he was forced to flee to the swamps.

Ukraine: Oleg’s Story

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.

Read our frequently asked questions.

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