Discovery Communications – the media empire behind the Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, and more – has just launched Discovery VR, a new 360 video platform for web and mobile that lets viewers experience a dive with sharks, an up close surfing lesson, a walk through Muir Woods, and more.

“For more than 30 years, Discovery has told stories like no one else — transporting you to places you didn’t know existed and sparking curiosity at every turn,” Discovery said on the intro to the new site. “Now we enter a new chapter. Virtual Reality can take you to new worlds like never before, immersing you in time, space and story. Here’s a first look at our latest productions in this exhilarating new space — from shark-infested shipwrecks to freeboarding the windiest street in the world — with much more to come.”

Discovery offers a few ways to watch the new content, including VR devices like Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR, as well as through the new Discovery VR app for iOS or Android. You can also view the videos through your web browser, which allows you to look around using your mouse, but the web version has a very noticeable distortion effect causes the quality of the video to suffer.

Stationary videos are cool, but the action shots are where it’s at

While the few shark videos posted by Discovery were interesting from an “ooh, ahh” perspective, they did not really show the real potential of the new platform. There are also a few nature walk videos that let you look around idyllic locations like Muir Woods or Half Moon Bay, but again, after the novelty wears off, they do not seem to be offering anything too game changing.

Where Discovery’s new VR platform does get exciting is with videos like the surfing instructional featuring pro surfer Kyle Thiermann. Most of the video takes place from the front of Thiermann’s surfboard, and he is able to walk the viewer through everything that is happening as he surfs, from the way he watches the timing of the wave to how he keeps his balance as he stands up.

“The really cool thing about this is that we can be looking all around,” Thiermann says during the video. “And we can actually learn how to read a wave in a way that you can’t normally do when you just see me.”

Screenshots via Discovery VR