I'm sharing this 'tutorial' in the hopes of improving it with your input and because I googled this very thing and I couldn't quite find what I needed, so I'm trying to figure it out.
The concept is simple. Panorama and 3-D apps have been around for a while. With the advent of Google Cardboard, a lot of these images can now be seen in virtual reality. The idea then is to construct an image and making it available for others to see as panoramas, but mostly in virtual reality. The challenge is to do it for free. Sure, it'd be nice to have a 3-D rig with 16 GoPro cameras for 3-D video, but lol newsroom budgets.
On that note, the New York Times, The Washington Post, Vice and others are exploring virtual reality photo and video storytelling and their efforts are worth watching. The Times is even giving away cardboard to support their upcoming VR app. It's very early, still and everyone is still trying to figure things out.
So let's jump in and do it ourselves.
