Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., the American company behind the multiplayer gaming cultural juggernaut World of Warcraft, intends to make a movie about their supremely successful franchise. To do this, the gaming company went to the film company Legendary Pictures, LLC. The Warcraft movie is still in production, but there have been a few teasers coming out of Legendary that are worth notice.

For example, here is Warcraft: Skies of Azeroth—a 3D YouTube video that uses panorama technology to allow viewers to look around while the video plays.

For the best browser experience use Google Chrome. But for the best experience overall, load the video on a smartphone or tablet with motion-sensors—you’ll thank yourself for doing it when you can physically pan around the video while the landscape is blurring past.

The entire experience is only a minute and twenty seconds long, but it’s worth it just to take in the capabilities coming to digital media.

What you’re seeing is Stormwind City from World of Warcraft, the massive human social hub for Alliance players in the game. And you’re seeing it from the back of a gryphon—a massive flying mount that’s basically a mixture between a lion and an eagle used by humans for transportation. By panning far enough to the left or right you can even see the huge wings gliding on the wind.

The Warcraft movie is expected in theaters June 2016 from Universal Studios, Blizzard Entertainment, and Legendary Pictures.

Meanwhile, World of Warcraft can look forward to an upcoming massive content expansion that will change the way that they play the game called World of Warcraft: Legion.

Legendary VR and the future of entertainment

Legendary is the film studio behind the movie Pacific Rim and upcoming film Beware Crimson Peak. The brave can experience these two films, and Skies of Azeroth, in virtual reality 3D via Google Cardboard or the Android Google Play app store and the Apple App store by visiting the Legendary VR webpage.

The Pacific Rim shots promise to be particularly spectacular, because who can turn down getting big-as-life big stompy robots fighting giant monsters.

For those visiting the Skies of Azeroth on YouTube seeing 360-video for the first time, the feature was released in March this year.

While capturing 360 video shots requires special equipment for real life, Legendary has the benefit of rendering movies such as Skies of Azeroth in a virtual world. As a result the camera itself is also virtual. This means that every 60 frames a second rendered for the 360-video on YouTube can be captured from one camera that is capable of looking in 360 degrees around itself at all times with no special equipment.

The experience is stunning and it may mean that films that are computer rendered (such as the Warcraft movie) may be the vanguard of films that will be coming to VR headsets such as the HTC Vive, Sony Morpheus, and Oculus Rift in the future. What’s already been seen on Google Cardboard from Legendary here is just the tip of the iceberg for VR-lite entertainment.

Image credit: “Skies of Azeroth” screenshot, Blizzard Entertainment and Legendary Pictures.