You can visit Yosemite National Park with Obama … in VR.

I was standing in the middle of Yosemite National Park hearing President Barack Obama talk about the place, which was funny since I haven’t been to Yosemite since 2001 and have never had a personal chat with the president.

I did, however, have a Samsung Gear VR headset strapped to my face, which teleported me from a Washington hotel room to the picturesque California park.

The occasion was an advance look at “Through the Ages: President Obama Celebrates America’s National Parks.” Obama may have welcomed a robotic giraffe to the South Lawn of the White House in 2014, but this is the first time he’s appearing in VR production.

Spoiler alert: Yosemite is beautiful

The clip — available today on the Oculus store for Gear VR devices and via a Facebook 360-degree video on National Geographic’s page — is one of Obama’s salutes to the 100th birthday of the service behind America’s national parks.

As VR productions go, this one — shot over six days, including Obama’s Father’s Day visit to the park this year — looks pretty static. We see Yosemite from the Merced River to the tops of its mountains, but most of the shots keep us in one place. The video does a better job of capturing time, as seen in a panorama of sunset over Yosemite’s summits, than of the magnificent expanse of the park.



By Rob Pegoraro.
Full story at Yahoo News.