Bigscreen is putting Meta to shame again, as the VR hangout app just got a serious bump in functionality for Quest users and PC VR users alike. Now VR’s favorite social viewing app includes native YouTube support, so you can watch anything on YouTube with friends and strangers.
Bigscreen has now added the version of YouTube you’d expect to find on a console or smart TVs, directly integrated into the VR hangout app. The update is out now for all supported headsets, including Meta Quest and all SteamVR and WindowsMR headsets.
This means you can use all YouTube features you’d expect, including logging in to your standard account or YouTube Premium account for ad-free viewing, watching YouTube TV for live sports and TV, and even renting movies through YouTube. Just like everything on Bigscreen, there aren’t any sharing limitations so you can easily pop on whatever you want: a TV show, rented movie, or live sport for friends and strangers.
For PC VR headsets, this also essentially means you don’t need to use the desktop mirroring function since YouTube is now baked in like all of the app’s other channels.
Following an update in December, this also means you’ll be able to share that screen with up to 15 people per room. Previous updates also brought improved spatial audio, new environments, and better remote desktop capability, which allows Quest users to stream their PC into their virtual room to share with friends.
Bigscreen says it has plenty more in the pipeline too. In the next few months, the studio says it’s looking forward to launching “a huge improvement to our Social VR platform with a new friends system, Bluetooth keyboard/gamepad support for Remote Desktop, and more,” Bigscreen CEO Darshan Shankar told Road to VR.
Bigscreen is available for free on all major headsets except for PSVR. There’s still no ETA on when to expect the app on PSVR although the developers have said in the past that its optimizations on Quest have essentially laid the foundation for PSVR in the future.