RamsHorn-Livingston Sanctuary, in 360 degrees and virtual reality

Yet another cool hike around the area is the Ramshorn-Livingston Sanctuary in Catskill, a pleasant hike with neat sights and sounds and a marsh overlook that's fantastic (and shakes a bit on top, which makes it better in my view).

As with previous tours posted here, The Street View map below constitutes many 360-degree images, all connected so that you can 'walk' around the trails. I did a big loop so I ended up touching on all trails. There are more than 30 images, all taken on June 3.

Take a virtual tour of Falling Waters Preserve in Saugerties

Another one of my favorite hikes around the area is the Falling Waters Preserve in Saugerties, an easy hike with some rewarding views of the Hudson River and the falls, two of them, that give the preserve its name.

As with the previous tour of Shaupeneak Ridge The Street View map below constitutes many 360-degree images, all connected so that you can 'walk' around the pond. This time, there are more than 40 images, all taken on May 29.

How to create a virtual reality 3-D panorama with your phone for Google Cardboard, for free

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.