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What to watch on your VR headset

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Quan Zhao
What to watch on your VR headset

If you’re not a gamer—and even if you are—it’s hard to justify spending a small fortune on a VR headset such as the $600 on the Oculus Rift ($600) or HTC Vive ($800) to experience 360-degree video and immersive storytelling. But you can experience VR for a lot less with one of the dozens of inexpensive headsets out there, such as the $15 Google Cardboard. These devices hold your own smartphone in place a few inches from your eyes, and then you watch the VR content on the phone display. 

While low-priced headsets are easy to find, great VR content is not. At the Apple App Store and the Google Play store, you can search for “VR games” to find Cardboard-compatible options. But finding great immersive, VR-powered video for smartphones is a bit more difficult. Here’s our list of some of the best places to start exploring.

As you might expect, the company that created those Google Cardboard headsets has a well-stocked library of content developed for the device. YouTube hosts VR content on its 360° Videos Channel. Among the many offerings are jaw-dropping clips from GoPro, Mountain Dew, and the Discovery Channel.

To view the content through a phone-powered VR headset, you’ll have to download the YouTube app (Android and iOS). Then select any VR-compatible YouTube video, load it onto your device, tap the Cardboard icon at the bottom of the screen, and watch as the video splits in two. That’s okay. You need a separate video stream for each eye. Then drop the phone into your VR headset, sit back, and enjoy the show.

If you don’t have a VR headset handy, that’s okay, too. You can still explore the worlds inside YouTube’s 360-degree videos by moving your smartphone around in your hand.

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