Window Wonderland: Google Lets You Tour New York City via Virtual Reality

Google has created a virtual reality experience that lets people enjoy the wonders of Manhattan in New York City and its famous holiday window art displays this Christmas. Through the VR experience called Window Wonderland, anyone anywhere in the world can go window shopping on New York's Fifth Avenue and enjoy the city's sights and sounds.

Google collaborated with major retailers in the area to create Window Wonderland, AdWeek reports. The VR experience works through Google Cardboard, Daydream, or Google View.

The team behind it noted the artistry and creativity that goes behind New York's holiday window displays. "We want to open them up to the whole world," Aman Govil, who heads Google's Art, Copy and Code Projects team, said in a blog entry.

Window Wonderland allows users to take a close look at window displays by world-famous brands like Macy's, Burberry, and Bloomingdale's. The experience also comes with audio, giving users the chance to hear the stores' representatives talk about the creative process behind the famed displays. Give it a try here.

Creating Window Wonderland entailed taking hundreds of high-res pictures of 18 stores along Fifth Avenue and stitching the images together to create a panorama that closely resembles real-life. Aside from Macy's, Burberry, and Bloomingdale's, the VR experience includes stores of American Girl, ABC Carpet and Home, Tiffany & Co., Tory Burch, Saks Fifth Avenue. Barneys New York, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, Bergdorf Goodman, Fendi, Cartier, Henri Bendel, Lord & Taylor, and Louis Vuitton.

The highlights of the Window Wonderland VR experience include seeing ice skating bunnies at Lord & Taylor's, glowing chandeliers at Bloomingdale's, and Barney's installations from South Park, according to Engadget. These are the same displays more than 5 million people who travel to New York get to see every year during the holidays.

Window Wonderland also features some of the items the retailers are selling. While the VR tour is free, however, the items are not.

Don't have a VR headset? Here's a preview of the Window Wonderland VR experience on YouTube.