If you haven't visited Machu Picchu yet (I haven't), I'm sure you have seen photos of friends or other wanderlusters epic journeys to this spot. You can now basically do the same trip virtually and for free.
Through the Jaunt VR app, you can experience the Salkantay Trek to Machu Picchu and other sites in Peru. They have a whole slew of other experiences you can check out from Sports, Music, Film, and other Travel destinations. You can use Jaunt with or without a VR setup.
Another similar app that lets you experience locations in virtual reality and 360 immersion is YouVisit. They have an array of experiences to choose from as well. From experiencing Tomorrowworld with Armin Van Buuren (Oculus) to flying (Oculus) through New York City in a helicopter to exploring Alaska (Oculus), they have tons of content to choose from.
You could actually visit Machu Picchu (Oculus) from both VR apps to get two different perspectives on the place!
Holoportation
Virtual reality still has a long way to go, but it awesome to see some of the new concepts coming out seemingly daily.
We posted the incredible video about Microsoft Research's holoportation concept a few days ago and have heard feedback from many people completely in awe of this tech.
While still very early on in the development process, the concept enables a realistic 3D avatar version of a person(s) to exist in real physical space for the VR viewer. It is pretty trippy and quite amazing. They even suggest this tech could allow you to watch previous "memories" and see them again from different angles, etc. to get a unique perspective of the past.
In my mind, the future of VR can easily be summed up by Doc Brown's quote:
Where we're going, we don't need roads.
