Google and the New York Times partner to deliver 300,000 Cardboard headsets
To celebrate the release of a new virtual reality experience, “Seeking Pluto’s Frigid Heart,” Google and The New York Times are teaming up to give away 300,000 Google Cardboard headsets. Those who will be receiving the headset have been selected based upon the duration of their digital-only subscription to the NYT.
The film will take viewers on an unexplored adventure to Pluto, showing off parts of the former 9th planet that have yet to be seen.
The film was narrated by science reporter Dennis Overbye and produced by Jonathan Corum, Graham Roberts, Yuliya Parshina-Kottas and Evan Grothjan from The New York Times graphics desk. The original music was scored by Graham Roberts and performed by Jessica Ferri, Mio Kanehara, Daniel Ambe and Nobuki Momma, who were recorded using a 360° microphone to allow the sound to travel with the viewer’s movements.
In order to make this possible to VR users, The New York Times worked with several institutes and associations to build three-dimensional virtual worlds. The data used was collected by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft which passed Pluto just last year.
If you remember, back in November of 2015, the two giants paired up to give away one million Google Cardboard headsets to help kickstart support for the NYT VR application. Now, The New York Times is showing off what is really possible with VR, and this aims to be a big release.
Download on Google Play: NYT VR – Virtual Reality
[via BusinessWire]