These vivid images are part of an eight-minute virtual-reality experience that catapults audiences into the center of the Millions March protest in New York in December. Created by two experienced directors, Chris Milk and Spike Jonze, in partnership with Vice News, the project is a virtual-reality journalism broadcast. It will make its debut on Friday at the Sundance Film Festival and in a new virtual reality mobile app called Vrse, which is available on the Vice News site.

Image The director Chris Milk has several projects that use virtual reality, describing the technologies as “empathy machines.” Credit... Emily Berl for The New York Times

There are three options for experiencing the project at home. The first is a virtual-reality headset, like the Oculus Rift device. The second is with the Vrse app, downloaded onto a smartphone and connected to a simple viewer, like a cardboard one that Google designed to be built on your own. Finally, viewers can download the app and watch directly on a phone, which provides a close approximation of the experience but loses some of the 3-D features.

Long the purview of the gaming world, virtual reality represents a new frontier for journalism. News reports for years have borne witness to the events shaping the world. Now, directors and reporters are experimenting with virtual-reality technologies to essentially transport people into those events.

In addition to the Millions March protest, Mr. Milk is releasing a virtual-reality project in collaboration with the United Nations that explores the life of a 12-year-old Syrian at a refugee camp in Jordan. The project, called Clouds Over Sidra, will make its debut on Friday at the World Economic Forum in Davos and on the Vrse app.

Mr. Milk, known for his experiments with technology-driven storytelling for music and museums, called virtual-reality technologies “empathy machines.”