BigScreen is a new VR application which brings you and your computer into a shared virtual space with your friends. The company is today leaving stealth to announce the closing of a seed round and that former Convrge creator Hayden Lee is joining the team as a co-founder.
BigScreen is similar to other social VR apps you might have seen, like Convrge or Oculus Social Alpha, bringing together up to four people in the same space as an avatar and allowing them to chat amongst one another. The big difference for BigScreen is that users also bring with them into the social space their actual desktop computer screen. With the screen, users can do anything and everything they could do on their computer, and everyone else in the room can see what’s on the screen.
This opens up a world of activities to do inside the space, because you’re now effectively shooting the breeze with three of your friends on the couch with some laptops (literally what much of my high school social life consisted of). From watching Netflix or YouTube together to watching a friend play a game, or event having everyone playing a game together as though they’re having a LAN party in the same room, BigScreen connects not just users but their screens too.
In April the company plans to launch BigScreen on the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, and says that the game will be cross-platform, connecting players together regardless of their headset. Mobile support is also in the works. The company is now accepting signups for their forthcoming open beta:
BigScreen CEO Darshan Shankar is a Y Combinator alum who says he’s been working on the project since 2014 and rolled it out as a private beta in July 2015. Shankar is now joined by Hayden Lee, co-founder of the much loved but now defunct Convrge social VR app. The company says they’ve raised a Seed investment from “Tier 1” VC firms, but are declining to be more specific than that, nor mentioning the amount of capital raised.