Jaunt VR, a company specialising in 360 VR Video, has collaborated with outdoor apparel giant ‘The North Face‘, going out on into the wilderness to create a VR experience which captures the beauty of the great outdoors in 360 degree 3D glory.

Jaunt is fast gathering quite a cache of 360 VR Video content. After exiting stealth mode following investment rounds last year, they’ve become a name to watch in the rapidly evolving VR Cinema space.

Now, they’ve collaborated with ‘The North Face’ to get out into the wild and attempt to capture its natural beauty for recreation in VR. The company’s proprietary cinematic VR technology, capable of capturing images in 360 degrees with full stereoscopy, has been put through its paces as it followed The North Face global athletes Cedar Wright and Sam Elias on a trek which takes them through Yosemite National Park and Moab, Utah.

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Jaunts cameras faced down precarious cliff edges and were even mounted below a specialised quad-copter in order to capture the required shots.

“Working with The North Face to capture the remarkable beauty of our national parks has been one of our favorite and most powerful projects to date,” said Jens Christensen, CEO of Jaunt. “We are creating an entirely new medium for entertainment and the content we’ve captured in Yosemite and Moab are perfect examples of just how transformative cinematic virtual reality can be.”

The experience is to form part of a marketing push in select ‘The North Face’ stores out of Chicago come March 16th. If you happen to live nearby, you’ll be able to pop in, don a VR Headset and step into the wilderness, virtually.

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“The North Face and our athletes are always looking to bring people into our expeditions and spark people’s interest in getting outdoors,” said Aaron Carpenter, Vice President of Marketing, The North Face. “The North Face VR transports people to Yosemite and Moab to see the beauty and be inspired to go see it for themselves.”

Using virtual reality to market goods and brands is becoming almost common place these days. But as VR technology improves and content producers like Jaunt become more adept at honing experiences, cinematic or otherwise, the technology holds fairly potent power as a marketing tool.

SXSW Interactive 2015 visitors can also receive an exclusive sneak peek of the content on Google Cardboard by visiting the Google Fiber Space at SXSW.

Full Disclosure: Brian Hart, who is Senior Systems Engineer at Jaunt, contributes articles to Road to VR.

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Based in the UK, Paul has been immersed in interactive entertainment for the best part of 27 years and has followed advances in gaming with a passionate fervour. His obsession with graphical fidelity over the years has had him branded a ‘graphics whore’ (which he views as the highest compliment) more than once and he holds a particular candle for the dream of the ultimate immersive gaming experience. Having followed and been disappointed by the original VR explosion of the 90s, he then founded RiftVR.com to follow the new and exciting prospect of the rebirth of VR in products like the Oculus Rift. Paul joined forces with Ben to help build the new Road to VR in preparation for what he sees as VR’s coming of age over the next few years.
  • Jacob Pederson

    So far, I’ve been very disappointed with JauntVR’s tech. The framerates and latency in the demos released so far are terrible on my 4GHZ PC. In comparison, MaxVR is capable of rendering a 1080p 3d movie plus a background scene without sacrificing framerate or latency. I get that 360 3d video is very difficult to render, BUT, if Jaunt sacrifices comfort to get it, they are going to have a negative impact on VR overall. Especially because most of the folks interested in movie-like experiences are going to be casual users, who won’t be forgiving if the experience makes them ill. If I were working at Jaunt, I would bang away on the player tech until full fps is possible, OR lower video quality.

  • Jacob Pederson

    Just tried the most recent version of the Jaunt player, and it is much improved! The stitching artifacts still look nasty, but the framerate and latency is a lot better. Can anyone give some thoughts on the GearVR version of Jaunt’s content?