Please note the following schedule change for Tuesday, April 26:

An extended hour-long edition of Click will air at 17:00 ET (5:00pm ET), replacing The Inquiry and the shorter Click edition usually aired at that time. This special program is also available for download and broadcast through May 3. Details follow.

Program Description: Click: “Virtual Reality Gets Real”

Did you ever imagine yourself as an astronaut and dream of boarding a mission to the moon? Forget the spectacularly unaffordable cost or the danger; now all you’ll need to do is put on a pair of virtual reality goggles. A number of companies are vying to sell you these headsets that offer gateways to whole new worlds. Clunky, expensive and likely to induce nausea just a few years ago, these latest goggles have now benefited from the advances in technology developed for mobile phones.

But if you are concerned by the alienating effect of your coach or trainload of fellow commuters plugged in with headphones into their mobile handsets, how uncomfortable are you going to feel when you look up and the whole carriage is full of people wearing virtual reality googles? Rather than enhancing or augmenting reality, will virtual reality push us ever further from what’s real; and break connections rather than forge bonds between human beings?

Virtual reality and 360 degree immersive film technology heralds the next revolution in visual communication, potentially as dramatic a change into how we view the world as that which came about with the introduction of cinema. But if we’ve been here before with virtual reality, this time it looks set to stay. Click is joined by experts, including virtual reality filmmakers, performers and philosophers to debate the transformative power of virtual reality – to put you in other people’s shoes, to inform and entertain you with experiences that might even seem out of body.

Broadcast Details:

Airing: Tuesday, April 26, at 17:00 ET (5:00pm ET).
Duration: 49 minutes 30 seconds (23 minutes & 26 minutes 30 seconds) or 59 minutes including the News Bulletins, billboards & promos.
Broadcast window: April 26 – May 3, 2016.

Download availability on www.bbc.co.uk/partners: from Wednesday, April 27 08:00 GMT for 7 days.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/partners/english/programmes/click–virtual-reality-gets-real

Additional information: A 30-minute edition of the program will broadcast at all other usual BBC broadcast times for Click. This short edition will be available to download from www.bbc.co.uk/partners slightly later than usual, from Wednesday, April 27 at 02:30 GMT.