Staffs of The Arizona Republic and USA Today Network

Virtual reality allows you to stand inside a virtual space in real proportions, in this case looking at the terrain and vegetation of border regions, and even hearing original sound from the area. “The Wall” project used a helicopter equipped with video and LIDAR technology, essentially a laser that measures distances, to help re-create geographical features of the border for the VR experience.

The three on-the-ground experiences for “The Wall” allow you to immerse yourself into a virtual representation of three locations along the border:

Near Tecate, where a steel border fence marks the line through rocky hillsides between California and Mexico.

In the middle of a canyon in Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas, where thousand-foot cliffs soar higher than any border wall could be built.

At the foot of Mount Cristo Rey, home of a religious shrine near El Paso, which serves as a pilgrimage site for people in both the U.S. and Mexico.

In addition to the virtual reality, in this experience you can also immerse yourself in a dozen videos and accompanying slideshows that capture stories along the border.

To fully experience this groundbreaking virtual reality, you need a HTC Vive system. However, this video explains and highlights the experience. The multimedia innovations in “The Wall” were a key reason the project received a $28,000 grant in 2017 from Journalism 360, a news initiative by Google News Lab and the Knight Foundation.