The annual Coachella music festival is dipping its toes into the virtual reality platform as its organizers recently announced that they are incorporating VR programming in this year's festival. Coachella organizers also released a new app and a custom designed Google Cardboard virtual reality headset which are being shipped out to all of this year's attendees through "welcome boxes" that contains their tickets.
According to Venture Beat, the Coachella Welcome Box will include a welcome guide to the festival, an entry wristband and the free Coachella VR viewer with instructions on how to download the app through Android, iOS and Samsung Gear VR app stores.
The accompanying app dubbed Coachella VR will allow owners of Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard virtual reality headsets to access a variety of 360-degree photos taken from past Coachella festivals as well as interviews and performances from this year's set of artists including Gallant, Chef Fretz and Matt & Kim.
The virtual reality app will also release a fully immersive virtual tour of the festival grounds. Based on the app's website, it will soon support high-end virtual reality devices such as the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
According to The Verge, the app will be regularly updated with fresh contents starting from the festival's first weekend in mid-April. Coachella fans and aficionados are still wondering whether the app will support livestream feed of the festival which are in virtual reality format or 360-degree video.
The 2016 Coachella festival will take place in Indio, California from April 15 to 17 for its first run and from April 22 to 24 for its second run.
While the recently release custom Coachella Google Cardboard rigs might be exclusive to festival attendees, there are a handful of readily available custom rigs from other well-known companies. The New York Times, McDonald's and "Star Wars" all entered into a partnership with Google in order to release custom designs specifically tailored for their needs.
Moreover, Google is also selling Cardboard units directly to consumers who are interested to get their hands into one of them. Google started selling Cardboard units on its online store in February.