Category: Bigscreen

Bigscreen Announces a New Virtual Reality Headset, Bigscreen Beyond, Billed as the World’s Smallest

Following on last year’s announcement by social VR platform Somnium Space, that they were going to release a branded VR headset (which was demoed at the Consumer Electronics Show held last month), today another social VR platform, Bigscreen, unveiled what they are calling the world’s smallest virtual reality headset: the Bigscreen Beyond.

Here’s the requisite, slick teaser promo:

Weighing only 127 grams, and at the diminutive size of 143 mm long by 52 mm wide, the Bigscreen Beyond goes on presale today for US$999.00, and the first units are expected to ship in the third quarter of this year.

One drawback of this device is its comparatively limited field of view (FOV), 90° by 93°, which many commenters on the r/VirtualReality subreddit community saw as a dealbreaker. However, people need to remember that Bigscreen is primarily a virtual space to gather with friends (from both near and far away) to watch movies together, and the Beyond seems like a logical, lightweight, comfortable headset whose primary purpose is to consume such content. It’s notable that the Beyond headset features a custom-moulded face cushion, and Bigscreen has built the necessary infrastructure in order to create these custom faceplates, on a quick turnaround, for each and every purchaser! (The Beyond also uses magnetically-attached custom lenses for those, like me, who might require vision correction.)

For further information on the Bigscreen Beyond, please visit their newly-revamped website, or join their Discord server.

And I wonder if any other social VR platforms are going to follow the lead of Somnium Space and Bigscreen, and branch out into branded virtual reality hardware. It’s an intriguing trend, and it certainly looks like we are going to see some interesting new VR headsets enter a marketplace dominated by Meta, with Valve and Vive fighting over the remainder. 2023 is going to be a fun year!

UPDATE 3:00 p.m.: Of course, the virtual reality hardware YouTubers are all over this announcement, dropping videos they recorded during the pre-release period, while under a press embargo. Here’s a 20-minute review by Adam Savage’s Tested channel, which included a chat with Bigscreen VR’s founder and CEO, Darshan Shankar:

UPDATE Feb. 14th, 2023: I forgot to mention one other interesting fact about the Bigscreen Beyond: you do a scan of your eyes before your device is delivered, not only for the custom-fitting face cushion, but also to set the IPD (interpupillary distance, i.e. the distance between the center of the pupils) for the headset! The IPD is fixed at the factory, and cannot be adjusted after delivery.

So, between the custom face cushion and the fixed IPD, this is not a device which can be shared between friends, coworkers, or family members! It is truly customized to your eyes and your face.

Also, as you might have guessed from the videos, this is not a wireless headset. It’s a PCVR device, which means that it must be connected to a desktop PC with a good graphics card. You’ll also have to shell out for SteamVR accessories such as hand controllers and base stations, if you don’t already have them; the US$999 only gets you the headset!

Bigscreen Partners With Paramount Pictures to Offer Movies in Social VR

Variety reports on a new partnership between social VR platform Bigscreen and Paramount Pictures:

San Francisco-based virtual reality startup Bigscreen has teamed up with Paramount Pictures to bring the theater experience to VR headsets: Bigscreen will begin showing classic Paramount movies like Interstellar and Star Trek in a virtual movie theater, where users can watch the films together with friends.

Much like a traditional theater, Bigscreen won’t overwhelm users with on-demand choices. Instead, the company will show only 4 movies every week, with showings starting every 30 minutes. Viewers can personalize their avatars, hang out in the lobby together, and even voice chat with each other.

According to Variety, movies will cost US$4-5 each.

Now, one issue that comes up with this new service is that most VR headsets can become uncomfortable to wear for the two hours (or longer) it takes to watch an entire movie. I have gradually built up my own tolerance for VR headsets and I can wear them for over two hours, but many newcomers to VR will find sitting through a whole film intolerable. The Oculus Quest headset in particular is a bit front-heavy, I find, which also affects how long you can wear it comfortably.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the Bigscreen-Paramount partnership is a good idea, but it might take until the second generation of VR hardware arrives for it to fully bear fruit.

Using Bigscreen As a Remote Workteams Virtual Reality App

A user named PixelRouter posted the following picture to the Oculus subReddit today:

With a post titled Bought 4 Quests and a Rift S and so the sales guy wanted a pic. Will be using them for remote collaboration with my team using Bigscreen. We’ve come along way since DK1, he sparked a lively discussion about the merits of Bigscreen as an example of Yet Another Remote Teams Virtual Reality App (YARTVRA). You can see a short list of other YARTVRA here.

When asked why he had decided to go this route, he replied:

I used Bigscreen when it first came out for the Rift a couple of years ago and found it was amazing for collaborating on digital work of all sorts. I once spent four hours teaching people to build a basic Unity VR game, inside Bigscreen. The trouble was all the wires. Now with the Quest I am hoping it will be nearly as simple as setting up a zoom video call to have team members step in to our Bigscreen room to talk about what we are working on while able to present their screens…

I use Zoom all the time for video calls with potential business partners and it’s OK, but the thing that is great about Bigscreen is the sense of presence you feel with the others in the same room. It feels much more like a real-world, in-person meeting.

When one person said that VR wasn’t yet at a stage where this would be logical, PixelRouter replied:

I disagree. At least this is my tentative stance as I set out to try this out at my company. I’ve been an Oculus developer since 2013 with the DK1. I discovered Bigscreen when it first came out about two years ago. At the time I was Technical Director at a VR company in New York. Some days I worked remotely from NJ and would use Bigscreen to review code and designs, with people at the office in New York. It was awesome, except for all the wires and setup. Now, with the Quest, I think we have crossed that threshold where it really is practical to use VR to collaborate…

This is core to my experiment here. I want to see what we can make of this. I’m not a noob. I went through the “VR is the best thing ever” phase, on to the, “but it’s not there yet phase”. Things change, though. I think that, with the Quest, it may have just crossed that convenience threshold which will make this stick. We shall see.

And I have to admit, this is a perfectly valid use for Bigscreen, which I hadn’t really given a lot of thought to before. I always used to see Bigscreen as more of an entertainment app, but it could be used as a remote workteams app, too!

Bigscreen: A Brief Introduction

Bigscreen 18 July 2018.png

Bigscreen is, as the name suggests, primarily an app for watching movies in VR. But it is also a social VR app, because you can share the experience with your friends:

Bigscreen is your VR movie theater.

WATCH movies with friends in a virtual theater.
PLAY your favorite PC video games on a huge screen.
HANGOUT in social VR chat rooms.

We also host events like weekly 3D movie nights and VR LAN parties!

— Features —

Your DESKTOP IN VR: see your PC’s desktop screen on huge virtual monitors that can be customized to any size or shape. Multi-monitor support for up to 3 virtual monitors.

DESKTOP STREAMING: screensharing in VR chat rooms enables you to watch movies with friends, play games together, and more.

Supports 3D MOVIES in Side-by-Side 3D or Over-Under 3D.

CROSS PLATFORM VR headset support

Public and Private social VR CHAT ROOMS with up to 12 people per room

Choose from a variety of environments like campfires and movie theaters.

Bigscreen is a free app available via both Steam and the Oculus store, for the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows Mixed Reality VR headsets. They are also currently doing alpha testing on Samsung Gear VR headsets:

And, according to the chatter on their official Discord server, they are also doing alpha testing for the Oculus Go VR headset.

So I downloaded and installed the client software to try it out. You can create public or private, invite-only rooms. The avatars reminded me of those in Rec Room, with only a head, torso, and hands. I found that I had a little bit of trouble getting all the avatar customization features to work properly. You cannot freely move your avatar around, but you can teleport from one unoccupied seat to another.

The first place I visited was a movie theatre where two other avatars were watching a bootleg copy of the Steven Spielberg movie Ready Player One, complete with Korean subtitles (which, ironically, seemed rather appropriate: why not watch a movie about VR in VR?).

Now, I’m sure that the makers of Bigscreen are not terribly thrilled that people are breaking copyright and misusing the platform in this way, but I can also see a lot of legitimate uses for the software. For example, you could invite your far-flung relatives into a private room in Bigscreen to watch that video you shot of your five-year-old’s birthday party, for example.

Bigscreen also allows you to see your computer desktop in VR:

Instead of that tiny 13″ laptop, play any game on massive, customizable screens. Wrap the virtual screen around you for a more immersive experience.

You can follow Bigscreen and its future development via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, or Discord.