North Face enhancing in-store experience with virtual reality

New York -- Outdoor apparel, equipment and footwear retailer The North Face has collaborated with Jaunt, which provides virtual reality (VR) hardware and software, on an immersive VR in-store experience designed to boost customers’ connection to the outdoors.



The attraction arrived in select North Face locations beginning in March in Chicago, and is now being rolled out to the company’s store in Manhattan. It transports viewers to Yosemite National Park and Moab, Utah, alongside North Face global athletes Cedar Wright and Sam Elias.



Using Google Cardboard, the North Face VR experience places viewers in the great outdoors. It provides a completely immersive, 360-degree 3D video and audio experiences that give viewers a convincing, high-quality sense of “presence.” Captured with Jaunt’s proprietary 360 degree, stereoscopic 3D cameras and advanced 3D sound-field microphones, the content places viewers right in the middle of the scenes with freedom to look around in any direction and experience every moment as if they were actually there.



“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.”