Having said that, I wonder if Facebook will start to engage in the content war, trying to ramp up their spending on original video content for their VR. It's an extremely expensive route to go, but it's certainly a possible strategy.
Anyone who has tried to take a photo of a climb they've just completed will know how difficult it is to really capture the climb and what was interesting or difficult about it. So much so that people will often resort to visual tricks to make the photo of the route look steeper, to match their non-photographic perception (you can pick this out by looking at the angle of trees in the background). It's also notoriously difficult to match a real-life climbing route to a photo, as anyone who has stumbled around a crag squinting at a guidebook will attest. I think this form really does capture what it's like to be looking at the route in real life.
The 3d effect is significantly better, and with actual volumetric content that you can move around in, the experience is totally different. I think there is definitely room for quality VR content along with "regular" movies, since they are both just different experiences.
As a side thought, can you imagine how boring skydiving in VR would be?
Anyway as an example: this video is kind of the inverse of skydiving, (360 camera on a balloon floating into space), but definitely an interesting experience that can't really be replicated on traditional media.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCve1w1GFOs&ab_channel=Seeke...
Another really interesting one: https://tenderclaws.com/theunderpresents