• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 13, 2015

Google and Mattel have partnered to bring the View-Master into the twenty-first century, complete with virtual reality using the technology behind Google Cardboard, developed in part to give agencies and brands a taste of the technology.

The View-Master shares similar design elements with the vintage View-Master, but rather than dropping in a reel the user pops open the device and slides in a smartphone. The device still requires users to pop in a reel with the content. Clicking on a location on the disk enables the person to not only see the experience, such as ships in the San Francisco harbor near Alcatraz Island, but to hear the foghorns as well. Users can click on the button to enter the Alcatraz prison, and can move their head to look up or down to get a 360-degree tour.

The View-Master won't begin selling until the fall. It will work with a custom Mattel app, as well as any Google Cardboard-compatible app, of which there are now hundreds in the Google PlayStore.

Virtual reality technology could become the future for a variety of games. The National Basketball Association (NBA) is working to capture All-Star games viewed on an Oculus-powered Gear VR headset from Samsung. VR cameras will shoot in all directions with the results sown together in post production, per one report.

Game or reality -- Business Insider reports that multimedia conceptual artist Mark Farid will wear a virtual reality headset through which he will experience life through another person’s eyes for 28 days straight. Farid's project, titled "Seeing I," will hold a Q&A to demonstrate the experience at the Imagine Science film festival at NYU, Abu Dhabi.