Once upon a time, the company with the biggest screens in the world made a big bet on virtual reality. Imax opened seven VR centers in movie theaters around the globe, each of which hosted a rotating selection of games, social experiences, and short narrative pieces. It set up a $50 million fund to develop content for those centers. It partnered with Google to build a next-generation camera that would allow filmmakers to realize their next-generation VR dreams.

Then it all disappeared. The camera project was canceled. That $50 million fund resulted in a single title, a Justice League tie-in that was so not-supersized that it could be purchased and played by home consumers. The VR centers started to close. This past December, Imax let shareholders know that the rest of it—the remaining centers and "certain VR content investments"—would be winding down as well.

That was that, it seemed. VR and movie theaters seemed like a good match in theory, but if a player like Imax bows out, what chance would those crazy kids have?

A pretty good one, as it turns out. Because while Imax was closing its centers, other big theater chains were tiptoeing into the space, using a different playbook. Better VR, fewer locations, and taking it nice and slow.

The newest of those slow-roll experiments opens today at a massive multiplex in suburban San Jose, California. Carved into the cavernous lobby of the Century 20 Oakridge, a sleek wood-and-light mini-lobby sells tickets to the debut experience from VR company Spaces. Terminator Salvation: Fight For the Future is a four-person experience structured like a real-life action movie. It's ridiculous in some very good ways. It's also the second test area opened by Cinemark, the third-biggest theater chain in the US—and the best indicator yet that Imax's mistake wasn't enthusiasm but selectivity.

Location-based virtual reality (LBVR) has been a ray of light in VR's otherwise dreary economic dawn. But like any consumer entertainment sector, it's a big enough term to encompass a wide continuum of quality. On the cheap end are mall kiosks and "VRcades" that let you wear a decent headset—or sometimes a low-powered mobile one—to experience titles that are commercially available for home headset users.

The other end of the continuum is something so different as to feel like another technology altogether. Companies like The Void, Dreamscape Immersive, and Zero Latency offer customers high-end, bespoke VR experiences that are unlike anything on the market. Backpacks and haptic vests let you roam freely around a large space; trackers on your hands and feet make sure that you can see your own body—and everyone else's bodies as well. Everything you see in VR is mapped to the physical space, so if you reach out your hand to touch a wall or grip a railing you see in VR, you'll really touch it. Even real-world props are tracked, so you can wield tools and weapons or pick up objects. Blowers, misters, and rumble panels bombard you with external stimuli that match up with the virtual world. The result is a tactile wonderland that amplifies your sense of presence and the memories you come away with.

That's what Spaces built with its Terminator experience, and it's what convinced Cinemark CEO Mark Zoradi to partner with the VR company when he demo'd the technology a little more than a year ago. "It was extraordinary from a tech standpoint," he says. "But the social aspect was really innovative. You don’t do this individually—you’re on a team and you’re seeing each other’s faces. It’s very much a shared social experience. We just thought that was spectacular."