Horror week is kicking off in Bigscreen starting today at 5:00 PM PT featuring The Ring and other terrifying movies like Cloverfield and World War Z. The lobby has a new look too, shown in the image above.
From February 7th (today) until next Friday, February 14th Bigscreen will be showing World War Z (3D), The Ring, Cloverfield, and 10 Cloverfield Lane as the featured films in Bigscreen Cinema. This means you can purchase movie tickets starting at $3.99 to meet up at a virtual movie theater that goes to great lengths to simulate the movie-going experience from the comfort of your VR headset at home.
According to Darshan Shankar from Bigscreen, they’re working on a bunch of new features that are coming soon:
Friend system to make it easier to invite people into your rooms,
Renting, buying, and watching 3D movies in your own private room rather than just pre-scheduled group cinema screenings so you can watch anytime with friends like a real home theater,
Licensing more (newer) movies, sports, anime, and other content,
Networking improvements to enhance audio, video, streaming, and performance,
Drive-In Movie Theater environment, but that likely won’t be out until near the end of 2020.
For more on Bigscreen and/or Bigscreen Cinema check out the official website and don’t forget you can watch our live in-VR news talk show podcast, The VR Download, from inside Bigscreen every week as well.
Bigscreen has released the latest lineup of big-name movies premiering this month in its recently released ‘VR Cinema’ feature.
A virtual reality movie theater always has felt like an obvious shoe-in for VR, a sentiment illustrated by some of our earliest articles covering VR cinema pioneers and the apps they chose to build. Since then of course, VR headset owners have been given numerous ways to enjoy films alone or with others, but for the most part those movies were self-provided, with the VR headset merely acting as an immersive viewing vessel for you (and your friends).
Image courtesy: Bigscreen
Bigscreen announced in December that they were looking to help evolve the movie VR experience by licensing studio films and giving Bigscreen users the opportunity to buy and watch them together in virtual theatres (either in private or in public virtual form). Ticket prices range between $4–$5 and can be purchased from Bigscreen‘s website directly.
The company has announced which movies will be available this month:
Image courtesy Bigscreen
January 10th to 16th
3D
Star Trek Beyond (2016)
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)
2D
Interstellar (2014)
January 17th to 24th
3D
Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Terminator Genisys (2015)
Top Gun (1986)
Think of the service like renting a movie from Amazon, but you watch virtually in a public theater in the style of the movie.
One of the biggest technical and experiential benefits of viewing 3D movies in VR though is the ‘perfect’ stereoscopy as each eye has a discrete view of its intended frame with no ‘cross-talk’ or dimming as is common with most passive 3D experiences in traditional cinemas. Granted, we’ve not yet tested the 3D quality available via the streaming service, so just how good the image is remains to be seen.
Image courtesy Bigscreen
Up until now, Bigscreen software itself—which lets you join rooms with friends and share your own media or watch free media channels in public rooms with others—has been entirely free. The paid films are offered in partnership with Paramount; Bigscreen is putting special emphasis on its 3D films, as streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video typically only serve up 2D versions, even to those who have 3DTVs.
Bigscreen says its working on additional ‘VR Cinema’ content, including private movie rentals to watch with friends, more movies, a drive-in movie theater environment, and themed movie events like ‘horror week’.
Bigscreen today announced it’s launched a new feature called Bigscreen Cinema, which brings a paid option to its free social VR platform that will let you buy a ticket to watch select 2D and 3D films each week.
Films, which can be seen in either private or public virtual cinemas on the Bigscreen platform, are priced between $4 and $5 (or local equivalent), and can be purchased on the company’s website. Unlike video on demand services, each week Bigscreen will be hosting four different films, which premiere every Friday at 6PM ET (local time here) and start every 30 minutes.
This week’s films include 3D versions of Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon (2017) and Ghost in the Shell (2017), and 2D versions of Star Trek (2009) and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
Image courtesy Bigscreen
Upcoming films include Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013),Terminator Genisys (2015), Interstellar (2014), I Love You, Man (2009), Star Trek Beyond (2016), Top Gun (1986), and Terminator 2 (1991), to name a few.
Bigscreen Cinema is launching on all supported platforms today in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, Netherlands, and Australia. Bigscreen supports Oculus Quest, Oculus Go, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index, and all Windows VR headsets. Find out how to download it for free here.
New theaters are also arriving with the entrance of Bigscreen Cinema, with Star Trek getting a space ship-inspired space and Indiana Jones debuting in an ’80s themed retro cinema.
Image courtesy Bigscreen
Up until now, Bisgscreen has been entirely free. The company is offering these films in partnership with Paramount, and will be announcing additional partnership soon, however this represents the first big steps for the company to begin monetizing its social viewing platform, which already benefits from user-to-user desktop mirroring.
This built-in feature works extremely well, and effectively lets you share anything you can watch locally with other VR users, thereby creating impromptu viewing parties and attracting like-minded users. The company is also putting special emphasis on its weekly 3D films, as streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video typically only serve up 2D versions.
This follows Bigscreen’s update this summer that brought 50+ streaming TV channels to the platform, which include streams from YouTube, Twitch, Pluto, and Comet. And yes, PSVR support is said to arrive to Bigscreen sometime in 2020, hopefully bringing its full suite of mirroring and streaming features.
Bigscreen, the social VR viewing platform, got a big overhaul recently that brought 50+ livestreamed TV channels for free to users on all supported VR platforms. Now, Bigscreen is getting a Halloween update that includes more spooky channels and a new retro cinema environment.
The update, which is now live, includes 10 TV channels from Pluto to the featured list. There you’ll find Fear Factor, Disney Channel, The Addams Family, the Asylum, Criss Angel: Mind Freak, Thrillers, Terror, and more.
A new Retro Cinema is also a part of the update, combining a ’70s and ’80s vibe—perfect for viewing the throwback classics such as A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) or Friday the 13th (1980).
Bigscreen supports all major PC VR headsets and standalone VR headsets. You can download the app for free from the Oculus Store (Rift, Go, Quest) or Steam (Rift, Vive, Index, Windows VR).
And on that note, Bigscreen founder & CEO Darshan Shankar says in a blog post that the team is currently working on launching PSVR support in 2020 in addition to a Friends system.
PlayStation VR users have long envied the app’s ability to view loads of content socially and also watch livestream views of the other user’s desktops. We’re hoping Sony doesn’t put up any more roadblocks than necessary, as PSVR is essentially the only major VR headset not to have Bigscreen support.
Today Bigscreen is announcing its latest new theater environment: The Retro Cinema! This stylish destination looks like it will be perfect for binging old favorites with friends. Bigscreen TV is also getting a slew of new Halloween-focused channels and will roll out a slate of “premium 3D movie screenings” later this year.
Movie theater environments are always popular with the VR community in Bigscreen (as evidenced by past updates like the Modern Cinema) so doing a throwback environment this time around was a no-brainer.
Additionally, Halloween is coming up fast next week so users will be able to check out some brand new Halloween-focused channels to get into the spooky mood. Until after Halloween Bigscreen TV is getting 10 new channels including Fear Factor, Disney Channel, The Addams Family, and more to spotlight terrifying Halloween-themed content.
Plus, all of the new theater environments are building towards an even bigger initiative very soon: premium 3D movie screenings. The ball started rolling on these two years ago when Bigscreen partnered with Paramount for Top Gun, and this December more screenings are planned for all VR headsets across several countries. There aren’t any other details yet, but it sounds exciting — especially if new movies could premiere this way in addition to revisiting classics.
We’ve got a round up of other content you can watch live in VR this week over here, but on the Bigscreen front more stuff is already in the works too. Every Thursday you can tune in for live Thursday Night NFL Football games and then in 2020 Bigscreen will get an internal Friends list that connects across platforms and it’ll be coming to PSVR as well.
BigScreenVR is a free application with the power to foster connection and social connection.
It’s fascinating to me that when the topic of VR is brought into conversation, oftentimes the first (and sometimes, only) thing that speculators want to address about the technology is that it’s fundamentally ‘isolating’.
Other times, speculators simply fail to recognize that VR hosts anything of meaningful social value.
Before I begin unpacking why I disagree on both counts, I’d like to mention that I was a gamer before I discovered VR. And while the term ‘gamer’ is loaded with competing social and antisocial connotations, in my own personal usage the term means that I’ve spent the better part of 25 years alone, silently boxed in a room, sat in front of a panel screen with a controller in my hands.
If VR is inherently isolating and lacks social value, then BigScreen VR is a discreet exception to the rule. As a quick rundown, BigScreen is an app (available for free on SteamVR, Windows MR, and across every Oculus headset) that places up to 12 users into designated ‘rooms’ resembling familiar locales like a movie theater or a penthouse apartment where they can chat, create 3D artwork, take photos, and livestream their own media content to massive virtual displays.
It may not sound like much to somebody who’s never experienced it, but there’s an intense feeling of liveliness that comes about when I sit next to, wave to, and bump fists with somebody who’s sitting across the planet in Australia while I curl up in my humble bedroom in Oregon.
BigScreen champions social VR media consumption by focusing its ongoing development on providing the best virtual television screen available. Between the app’s inclusion of dynamic lighting effects that bounce off of the walls and furniture to its notably smooth optimization for content streaming between headsets, the final product delivered by BigScreen is convincing enough to feel as though it’s a screening space that does exist.
When I first explored the app back in late 2017, I found that 8-bit and 16-bit content was easy to stream from my computer while running my Oculus Rift CV1. Likewise, lower resolution on the video feed meant increased visibility inside of the headset. I scanned through my Steam backlog for games I’d been avoiding and picked out Undertale, a highly personal, overtly emotional singleplayer roleplaying game that often questions the player’s sense of choice and consequence throughout.
Whereas I would have felt isolated in my own mind as I burned through the nine-hour campaign while staring at my computer screen—instead, BigScreen empowered the narrative-driven title to bloom into a collaborative experience from which I and three former strangers bonded over the course of a few memorable nights. We laughed, we cried, and yes, we all reeled over that one jump scare near the end. Whenever I got stuck, one of my guests would search up a walkthrough and dictate the page’s contents while I continued scrambling through the game.
To my surprise, each time I hosted a gaming room, it’d quickly hit capacity and then continue to retain a high visitor count. Every so often, people would join having already played the game in question, ready to hold a conversation about their own personal experiences with it. But more often than not, visitors came in to keep me company as I played simply because they didn’t feel like haphazardly scrolling through the half-finished movies and television show episodes commonly hosted in other BigScreen rooms.
Sure, donning a VR headset took me away from everything happening in my physical vicinity. That’s how VR isolates in the most literal sense.
But the intended way to enjoy any of those titles, without a VR headset strapped to my face, would have involved me slinking into the corner of my bedroom and staring at a box. No conversation, no laughter. No banter to share around. Nobody sitting on my left or right sides, lying down on their couch and watching the virtual 100-foot screen intently. Instead I’d be hunched over, quiet, listening to the fan blow on the back of my head as I stared at the very screen I’m staring at now.
At the same time, BigScreen VR allowed those simpler games to function as social catalysts, and I might not have connected so easily with others had I not made traditional gaming the focal point of my socializing efforts.
Nevertheless, when speculators associate VR with isolation, remember that ‘isolating’ technologies have existed for a very long time. Multiple forms of media that society has embraced for decades can certainly lead to isolation. Traditional, single player gaming is a potent example of isolating technology in that very sense.
But social VR apps like BigScreen do provide a clear alternative to playing video games alone. And for some, that’s the sweet spot for social connection that only VR can enable.
What are some of your favorite social VR memories? Let us know down in the comments below!
Social VR app Bigscreen is planning to launch on PSVR, the company affirmed this week. Though it may not come until late 2019 or early 2020, when it does, Bigscreen will be just about the only app to support every major VR headset.
If you’ve got a friend who has a headset that’s different than yours but you want to hang out in VR together, the question of ‘where?’ becomes a tricky game of ‘which app supports both of our headsets?’. Yes there’s Rec Room, which spans a good many headsets, but not Oculus Go or Gear VR. VRChat is an option, but doesn’t support PSVR, Go, or Gear VR. And you could of course think about Facebook Spaces, but that’s not on any of Oculus’ mobile headsets or PSVR. Then there’s all the Oculus social apps, not one of which even supports all of the company’s own headsets.
Bigscreen, however, has been a ray of hope in the darkness, as the company has aggressively pursued support for virtually every major headset out there except one: PSVR. But the company plans to bring that headset into the mix too, finally becoming the one social VR app to rule support them all. (Technically Bigscreen doesn’t support Daydream headsets, though Google seems to have left the platform to wither).
Bigscreen tweeted this week that PSVR support is on the roadmap, aiming for “late 2019 or early 2020.” The company had previously expected to add PSVR support to Bigscreen in 2018, but those plans didn’t pan out.
Bigscreen lets users join virtual rooms together and (if on a PC) use their Windows desktop via a virtual monitor floating in front of them. The concept sounds simple, but with the ability for anyone in the room to project their PC screen onto a giant virtual screen for everyone to see, it’s easy to watch movies, play games, or just browse the web together while feeling like you’re sitting on a couch together.
Given that PSVR users don’t have a Windows desktop to use, the question of ‘what would they even do in Bigscreen?’ was a poignant one—until about two weeks ago when the company launched Bigscreen TV, a service which streams video content into officially hosted public rooms for anyone to watch. That means that PSVR users will be able to find streaming video content to gather around with friends, even if none of them are on a PC VR headset for content sharing.
Speaking to Road to VR, Bigscreen founder Darshan Shankar said that “PSVR is by far the #1 request we receive for Bigscreen. Every Reddit post, YouTube video, and tweet has comments asking for PSVR.”
It’s clear that the company was waiting to roll out Bigscreen TV—which Shankar called “perfect for PSVR”—before bringing the app to the headset so that users wouldn’t have to rely on others to find something to watch. He said that the company also has plans to host social VR movie night events and offer 3D movie rentals, all of which would be available to PSVR users.
Late 2019 or early 2020 is a long wait but we’ll continue to cheer-on Bigscreen’s efforts to connect everyone together regardless of their headset choice.
Bigscreen released their ‘Bigscreen TV’ update two weeks ago, which brought 50+ livestreaming TV channels to the platform for free. Now, company founder and CEO Darshan Shankar reports the social viewing platform received more than 5,200 users who want to watch it in VR this afternoon.
If those numbers sound a bit too good to be true, Shankar explains that it’s actually in the realm of possibility. Last week, the platform hosted a viewing party for FReality podcast with YouTubers Nathie, VROasis, Rowdy Guy, and Zimtok5 which garnered a total of 1,201 people.
Granted, not all 5,200 users will be in the same room together, but rather given access to publicly available rooms that hold a maximum of eight users a piece; a channel can however technically support “thousands of people,” Shankar says.
The launch, which is destined to ferry 5,000 pounds (~2,300 kg) of supplies to the International Space Station, will also be carrying a new dock adaptor for the ISS that will allow for an additional ship to dock at the station. As reported by The Verge, the adaptor is the third of its kind; the first was destroyed in a failed SpaceX launch in 2015, and the second was installed on the ISS in 2016.
The launch is slated to take place today, July 24th, at 6:24 PM ET (local time here) from SpaceX’s launchpad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The weather is a factor here however, with a 70 percent chance that the launch will be delayed.
Bigscreen supports HTC Vive, Valve Index, Windows VR, Oculus Rift, Oculus Go, Oculus Quest, and Samsung Gear VR. Check out the links below to download.
The studio says there’s more events coming later this week, including the Fortnite World Cup Finals and a few free movie events too. Most recently, the platform hosted a free viewing of Sacha Baron Cohen’s satirical film The Dictator (2012).
Bigscreen, the social VR platform that lets you stream your computer’s screen to others, just got a substantial update that brings with it 50+ streaming TV channels, including sports, gaming, movies, anime, news, and more.
All streaming TV is served up for free directly from Bigscreen and shown in its public theater rooms around the clock. Some channels may not be available in all areas, however we’ve confirmed that a majority are at least available in Europe.
The update comes to all supported platforms, including HTC Vive, Valve Index, Windows VR, Oculus Rift, Oculus Go, Oculus Quest, and Samsung Gear VR.
Public Bigscreen TV rooms support up to eight users, although a channel can technically support “thousands of people,” Bigscreen CEO and founder Darshan Shankar writes in a blog post.
To accomplish this, Shankar says the company created a new VR video browser technology that can load video streaming and livestreaming sites such as YouTube, Twitch, Pluto, and Comet. And while the platform’s peer-to-peer screen sharing has been greatly optimized, direct streaming means there’s no upload bandwidth requirements.
The UI has also been modeled after smart TV interfaces, which favors one-click actions instead of laborious text insertion.
Image courtesy Bigscreen
Here’s a quick list of some of the channels you can jump into today:
Movies & TV: Rifftrax, MST3K, Anime, Pokémon, Pluto Movies, Comet, Shout! Factory, and more
Gaming & Sports: Red Bull TV, 24/7 Poker, 24/7 Trivia, CBS Sports, FOX Sports, Top Twitch (Ninja, Shroud, Sodapoppin, Timthetatman, Lirik, DrDisrespect, DrLupo, Pokimane, Summit1g), and more
News & Finance: NBC, CNN, Bloomberg, Sky News, Newsy, Cheddar News, RT America, Weather Nation, Crypto News, and more
Random: Monstercat, Lofi Hip Hop Beats Radio, Comedy Central, NASA, SpaceX, 24/7 Cats, and more
In a few weeks, Bigscreen will also be announcing its own Bigscreen TV events, new TV channels, and a new cinema environment. At some point this summer, the platform will also release a friends system, and premium 3D Movie Nights in partnership with major movie studios. Upcoming events include:
A team of researchers at the University of New Haven recently uncovered an exploit that could mean a serious security threat to apps built on the Unity game engine. Bigscreen Beta, the Unity-based social VR platform that lets you stream you monitor to others and chat in virtual reality, was particularly vulnerable before being patched last week.
Bigscreen founder and CEO Darshan Shankar says the exploit was “reported to us and has been fixed already” and that it was “not exploited by hackers, and no one is currently vulnerable to this issue. It is fixed.”
The security patch was also publicly noted in the app’s most recent update log, among which included a number of new features such as real-time raytracing lighting effects, new environments, new avatars, and new user interface.
Before the vulnerability was patched in a recent Bigscreen Beta update, University of New Haven researchers were able to accomplish a dizzying list of bad deeds using their own ‘command and control’ tool in effort to not only render the platform unsafe for private conversation, but also potentially infect computers with any type of malware by using Unity’s OpenURL command.
Unity has since issued a warning to developers who use the OpenURL command in their games, saying “you must be extremely careful that you do not provide a string to this function which could possibly be maliciously crafted or modified by a 3rd party.”
The researchers say in a news update that without a user’s knowledge and consent—and even without tricking users into downloading software or granting access to the computer—they were able to:
Turn on user microphones and listen to private conversations
Join any VR room including private rooms
Create a replicating worm that infects users as soon as they enter a room with other VR users
View user computer screens in real-time
Send messages on a user’s behalf
Download and run programs – including malware – onto user computers
Join users in VR while remaining invisible. This novel attack was termed as a Man-In-The-Room (MITR) attack
Phish users into downloading fake VR drivers
“Our research shows hackers are able to monitor people day in and day out – listen to what they are saying and see how they are interacting in virtual reality,” said Dr. Ibrahim Baggili, founder and co-director of the University of New Haven Cyber Forensics Research and Education Group. “They can’t see you, they can’t hear you, but the hacker can hear and see them, like an invisible Peeping Tom. A different layer of privacy has been invaded.”
The team also created a video showing just what deleterious effects the exploit could have wrought on users if they didn’t find it and report it first.
Thankfully, what could have been a disaster for the platform’s users, which use the app both as a virtual desktop and shared viewing platform, was averted before any harm could be done.
“Working alongside security researchers and our internal security & QA practices will help us stay ahead of malicious hackers,” Shankar told Road to VR.
