I was one of the first humans to see a solar eclipse in virtual reality

No special filtered glasses required to stare at the Sun in a Gear VR headset.

I've been told that being present for a total eclipse of the Sun is a life-changing experience. But I wasn't able to get my act together to travel to the path of totality for today's event. Luckily, I am part of the first generation to be able to experience an eclipse vicariously through the magic of virtual reality. While seeing a total eclipse in VR wasn't exactly a life-changing experience, it was one of the best examples I've seen of the power and promise of live, 360-degree video.

I first tried to view CNN's 360-degree Facebook Live video coverage of the eclipse on my Oculus Rift. Despite numerous tries, though, the livestream never showed up as a choice on the list of "New" or "Top Pick" videos available on the Oculus Video app. Without a built-in search function or any way to navigate to a specific URL or some such, viewing the eclipse on the Rift was a bust.

As a backup, I dug out the latest Samsung Gear VR headset and a Galaxy S7 Edge. While I waited for some necessary updates to download, I was able to watch CNN's "VR" coverage in a simple Web browser window. I used the mouse to tilt the virtual camera between the people on the ground and the Sun in the sky. Having control of the viewpoint was nice, but watching through a small window on a laptop screen didn't really feel all that different from watching similar coverage on TV.

A low-res Sun

I finally got the stream working on the Gear VR in time for the eclipse to hit Wyoming, the third of seven eclipse locations CNN was covering in VR. The video started out extremely grainy, but it got a bit sharper as the bandwidth caught up with itself. Even with the highest-quality stream from the 4K cameras, though, the relative image I saw on the Galaxy S7's 1440x2560 screen was much blurrier than the same stream viewed on my Macbook Air screen.

In VR, facial features of people are hard to make out if they were more than a few feet from the camera, and details on the horizon almost completely lacked definition. There was also none of the "stereoscopic 3D" effect you usually get from most other apps in virtual reality—this was more like looking at a 2D video projected on a 360-degree dome surrounding me.

The VR image also had a fair share of compression artifacts, especially when the sky grew dark and the streaming algorithms struggled to differentiate between the small gradations of black. While people live on the ground started talking about seeing individual stars and even planets in the darkened sky, I could only see large, color-banded blobs of different shades of black. It reminded me of nothing so much as watching grainy RealVideo streams in the early 2000s, only with a viewing "window" that surrounded me completely.

The midday sunset

What the VR experience lacked in sharpness, it made up for in its overwhelming, all-encompassing nature. Watching the eclipse in VR, I could really get the sense of the sky darkening quickly all around me as totality approached. I got the sense of a rapid dawn when the Moon's shadow started to recede. It was incredible being able to turn in place and see a virtual, eclipse-generated "sunset" in all directions on the horizon from the comfort of my own kitchen. Hearing the whoops and hollers of onlookers alongside the confused chirping of birds and crickets picked up by the microphones only increased the immersion.

Looking directly up at the Sun in VR doesn't risk permanent eye damage the way it would in real life. But it also doesn't provide the kind of "crescent Sun" effect I was hoping to see as the Moon started to cover up the corona. Luckily, CNN superimposed a large, floating "eclipse cam" view with the correct filters and telescopic zoom to show the eclipse in much sharper detail. Being able to glance back and forth between this close-up shot and the surrounding scene on the ground around me in virtual space was a pleasant "best of both worlds" that made me feel like I was in two places at once.
I also appreciated the variety of eclipse locations CNN was able to cover over a two-hour span, from a wide-open field in Idaho, to a neon-covered street in Nashville, to the seat of a helicopter floating above Charleston. Through it all, a variety of hosts and guests rambled, repeating themselves quite often about the "once in a lifetime" grandeur of it all and the way ancient humans were awed by what is now an utterly predictable astronomical occurrence. CNN also superimposed some ethereal "space music" on top of pretty much any eclipse moment, which was a bit distracting.

As my wife and I passed the Gear VR headset back and forth to share in the multiple eclipse viewing locations CNN cycled through, she commented to me that this was the first use for the headset that has convinced her of the value of "this VR stuff." I'm not sure I'd go that far, but this is the kind of astronomical event that really gains something from the sense of surrounding presence that only a VR headset can provide. Hopefully, the hardware and streaming resolution issues will be improved by the time the next total solar eclipse hits the US in 2024.