Oculus’s ex-Pixar talent wants to make you cry — and show you VR is about more than realism

Virtual reality is going to enable us to enter fantasy and sci-fi worlds beyond our imaginations, but it’s also going to let us watch cute stories about fuzzy anthropomorphic animals.

Oculus VR, the wholly owned subsidiary of Facebook, has just released Henry, which is the latest project out of the company’s Oculus Story Studio. It enables Oculus Rift owners to experience the adventures of a little brown hedgehog who loves to hug people — only that’s a problem for a guy covered in spiky spines. If that sounds adorable to you, that’s because the VR short film comes from some of the minds that worked on Pixar films like Monsters University and Dreamworks’ Madagascar.