When the download finished, he didn't just see a photo. He saw the world as his father had stood in it. By injecting the "XMP metadata" back into the file, he tricked his computer into recognizing the sphere once more. He put on a VR headset, a heavy crown of plastic and glass.

Downloading a 360 photo from Facebook can be tricky because the platform often defaults to downloading a "flat" version (equirectangular projection) rather than the interactive 360-degree file you see on your screen How to Download a Facebook 360 Photo To get the best result on a desktop, follow these steps: Open the Photo