If you haven’t had the opportunity to visit major Israeli tour spots, you can now experience some of them through virtual reality tours on the Virtually Israel 2.0 website.
A project of the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation and the MERONA Leadership Foundation, Virtually Israel 2.0 features the following videos:
· Beaches
Philanthropist Adam Milstein told the Journal in a phone interview that the idea for virtual reality videos came about three years ago, when virtual reality was becoming “very, very popular” and was clearly where the future is headed. They initially produced two virtual reality videos two years ago and they were very well-received among various Jewish organizations.
“We wanted to give people a much wider variety,” said Milstein. “We wanted to give them all the different things in Israel that will interest Jews and non-Jews, so we’re giving them a lot of tourist attractions.”
Milstein explained that they had a team of volunteers that went to those specific areas in Israel that took footage and pictures of the tourist sites from different angles in order to create the virtual reality videos. He added that more videos could be on the way.
“Based on our success, we’ll do more things that people feel we didn’t cover in the first ones,” said Milstein.
Milstein hopes that the videos cause people to understand the truth about Israel.
“Israel is not a war zone. It’s not a place of the conflict between the Palestinian and the Israeli,” said Milstein. “It’s a place of peace and prosperity and happiness and innovation, a place that anybody should go and enjoy. We’re showing Israel the way it is, the real colors, we don’t let the media contaminate the image that we have on Israel.”
“The main takeaway is, we’re using innovation to tell the truth about Israel.”
The videos are all available on 2D and can be seen in 3D on platforms like Google Cardboard.
