Expore 360-Degree Flickr Pics With Samsung’s Gear VR

Strap on the virtual reality headset and open the Flickr app to see a carousel of top-curated 360-degree images.

Explore the world in 360 degrees with the new Flickr app for Samsung Gear VR.

Strap on the virtual reality headset, slip your phone inside, and open the Flickr app to see a carousel of top-curated 360-degree images.

“Over the years, Flickr users have uploaded tens of thousands of 360-degree photos and today we’re offering a new way to explore and view these images,” Principal Engineer Bertrand Fan wrote in a blog post.

“Select any image and you’ll instantly be transported to another place and time,” he said, highlighting the Aurora Borealis in Finland and Arizona’s Horseshoe Bend in the Colorado River (pictured).

To download the Flickr VR app, connect your phone to the Gear headset, click the “Store” tab at the bottom of Oculus Home, swipe until you find the right program, and install.

Then tap into user images of Berlin’s graffiti-covered Teufelsburg, Leleuvia Island in Fiji, a field of sunflowers in France, and Italy’s lakeside town of Lazise, among others.

More features will be added soon, including the ability for Flickr to automatically detect 360-degree photos on upload and enable the VR viewer on the photo page.

If you’re still waiting on your Gear VR to arrive, Web users can, in the meantime, click and drag around an image with their mouse for a similar, though less immersive, experience.

In what Oculus called “a historic moment for VR,” the new Samsung Gear VR began shipping last month in the U.S. and internationally. The $99 Oculus-powered headset works with the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, Edge+, and Note 5 smartphones.

Samsung later released a specialized browser designed for the wearable, which allows users to surf the Web without lifting a finger. Samsung Internet for Gear VR supports a full 360-degree view of open tabs, as well as 3D video streaming and HTML5.