The developers behind Bigscreen Beta, the social VR app that lets you stream and share your desktop’s screen in VR, have been pretty quiet over the past year, although that’s about to change in what studio CEO & founder Darshan Shankar calls some “massive new features” coming to the app.
“We have been heads down totally overhauling Bigscreen with some massive new features that will be rolling out in a series of updates in the next 3 months,” Shankar says in a reddit post. “The biggest problems, bugs, frustrations you have had with Bigscreen Beta have been fixed in this update, along with some beautiful new features.”
Bigscreen Beta’s first update of the year is slated to arrive in two weeks to Steam (Rift, Vive, Windows VR), Oculus Store (Rift), and the mobile Oculus Store (Gear VR, Oculus Go).
The first big reveal: a new avatar system that brings even more choices so you can create a unique you, replete with new hats, hair, and beards. According to the video (linked below), Bigscreen is also getting new environments and “even more features.”
“We plan to spend the next week or two testing this before releasing it to the whole world,” Shankar says, referring to the first update.
Bigscreen Beta is a free app that lets you mirror your desktop in VR, be it in a social environment for collective viewing or gaming, or alone in your own personal movie theater. The app has seen several updates since it was first released in mid-2016, including support for up to 12 users in bespoke ‘Big Rooms’ and vastly improved streaming quality.
Since all Bigscreen rooms are peer-to-peer encrypted, both voice chat and desktop screens stream directly to people in the room; they aren’t hosted on the company’s servers, meaning only one friend needs a Netflix account to start that all-night viewing party.
Users looking for a preview can help test out the new functions by joining Bigscreen’s Discord channel (invite link). If this is only the first update to an admittedly “massive” overhaul, we can’t wait to see what’s next.