While the animations were being developed, we landed a partnership with the technical wizards at Lytro to create our live-action scenes. Their light field technology can bring an extraordinary amount of depth and detail to a virtual reality image. The biggest VR camera we use regularly at The Times is about the size of a basketball. Lytro’s camera is the size of a sumo wrestler. It gathers about 475 times more visual information than we do for a standard VR piece. Lytro’s system also features Six Degrees of Freedom (6DoF), which enables the viewer in aheadset to move around within the piece. If you are standing in front of a person, you can close the distance to them or step farther away. If you are watching an animation, you can crouch down or swivel to the side to see what the image looks like from a different angle. This freedom of movement increases the sense that you are right there with Rachel. It’s what we call “presence” — the magic of VR.

During this process, we were also working closely with Brendan Baker, a sound designer whom I knew from his work on the podcast “Love + Radio,” which is known for its innovative use of sound in storytelling. I thought of him as the mad scientist of the podcast world, which was exactly what we needed to create a sound design that could accurately represent the sounds that Rachel was hearing when she first turned on her cochlear implant. The production company Q Department came in on the back end to spatialize the sound design so the sound would adjust as you moved your head in the headset.

When Rachel got that playlist from her friends, she was trying to do something she hadn’t done before: hear music. In working on this piece, we were trying to do some things we hadn’t done before. We were trying to create a VR piece that was animated, that incorporated new 6DoF technologies and that told Rachel’s story with the depth and sensitivity it deserved. In the VR department, our jobs are the most exciting when we can use a new technology to shine a light on an important story.

There are several ways to experience “Sensations of Sound” and other NYT VR pieces. You can watch through the NYT VR apps in Oculus and Daydream headsets for an immersive experience. You can watch on your phone through the NYT VR app or by clicking on this link and waving your phone around to explore. Or you can watch on your computer and use your mouse to scroll around in the 360 video.