Category: bigscreen

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‘Bigscreen’ Teams with Paramount Pictures on VR Cinema, Free Screenings of ‘Top Gun’ in 3D

Social VR app Bigscreen is teaming up with Paramount Pictures to debut a new virtual cinema inside of Bigscreen. The cinema will operate much like a real movie theater, offering timed screenings of Top Gun (1986) in 3D, free for a limited time. Players can join friends to watch together.

Bigscreen is a social VR app which lets users connect with friends in a virtual environment where everyone can use and share what’s on their own computer screen. One popular activity is to share videos and movies. The app had already introduced a movie theater environment, but now they’re kicking things up several notches with a new offering which will see official, timed movie showings.

Paramount Pictures is the first to team up with Bigscreen to bring content to the new cinema. Starting on December 29th at 6PM ET, the Bigscreen cinema will show free, timed screenings of Top Gun in 3D to Bigscreen users, supporting “a few dozen” users per theater, with the rest of the seats filled out by NPCs to give a sense of a packed house. The screenings are only available for US users and require Windows 10 (though Bigscreen in general is of course international and supports Windows 7, 8, and 10.

“Bigscreen’s virtual reality platform offers a new way for fans to experience films in their homes,” said Bob Buchi, President Worldwide Home Media Distribution, Paramount Pictures. “We’re excited to be a part of this experiment using cutting-edge technology to give fans a new entertainment option.”

Image courtesy Bigscreen

Bigscreen CEO Darshan Shankar says the team has anticipated the potential for trolling during showings, and so Bigscreen’s cinema screenings will include both a ‘Whisper Mode’, which means users outside of a very small radius won’t be able to hear each other, and what he called the ‘Troll Cage’, which makes players disappear if they try to walk too far from their seat.

SEE ALSO
'Bigscreen's' New Big Rooms Support Dozens of Users Simultaneously

Shankar also says that the company is building a content lineup to support the new cinema, and aims to offer fresh screenings each week in 2018, during which the company may experiment with monetization models for the official cinema content.

The post ‘Bigscreen’ Teams with Paramount Pictures on VR Cinema, Free Screenings of ‘Top Gun’ in 3D appeared first on Road to VR.

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‘Bigscreen’ Free Screenings of ‘Top Gun’ in 3D Start Today, Check Showtimes Here

Social VR app Bigscreen is teaming up with Paramount Pictures to debut a new virtual cinema inside of Bigscreen. The cinema will operate much like a real movie theater, offering timed screenings of Top Gun (1986) in 3D, free for a limited time. Screenings start today, December 29th and go until December 31st. Players can join friends to watch together.

Update (12/19/17): Bigscreen has just published showtimes for ‘Top Gun’ in 3D. Check out the full schedule at the bottom of this article.

Bigscreen is a social VR app which lets users connect with friends in a virtual environment where everyone can use and share what’s on their own computer screen. One popular activity is to share videos and movies. The app had already introduced a movie theater environment, but now they’re kicking things up several notches with a new offering which will see official, timed movie showings.

Paramount Pictures is the first to team up with Bigscreen to bring content to the new cinema. Starting on December 29th at 6PM ET, the Bigscreen cinema will show free, timed screenings of Top Gun in 3D to Bigscreen users, supporting “a few dozen” users per theater, with the rest of the seats filled out by NPCs to give a sense of a packed house. The screenings are only available for US users and require Windows 10 (though Bigscreen in general is of course international and supports Windows 7, 8, and 10.

“Bigscreen’s virtual reality platform offers a new way for fans to experience films in their homes,” said Bob Buchi, President Worldwide Home Media Distribution, Paramount Pictures. “We’re excited to be a part of this experiment using cutting-edge technology to give fans a new entertainment option.”

Image courtesy Bigscreen

Bigscreen CEO Darshan Shankar says the team has anticipated the potential for trolling during showings, and so Bigscreen’s cinema screenings will include both a ‘Whisper Mode’, which means users outside of a very small radius won’t be able to hear each other, and what he called the ‘Troll Cage’, which makes players disappear if they try to walk too far from their seat.

SEE ALSO
'Bigscreen's' New Big Rooms Support Dozens of Users Simultaneously

Shankar also says that the company is building a content lineup to support the new cinema, and aims to offer fresh screenings each week in 2018, during which the company may experiment with monetization models for the official cinema content.

Showtimes (US only)

Starting December 29th at 6:00 PM ET (your local time here), showings will continue until December 31st at 2:00 AM ET.

To enter a screening, all you need to do is look at the top of a cinema entrance and an 8-second timer will count down before teleporting you and your friends automatically into the cinema. Check out Bigscreen’s official post here for more info.

The post ‘Bigscreen’ Free Screenings of ‘Top Gun’ in 3D Start Today, Check Showtimes Here appeared first on Road to VR.

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Bigscreen ‘Big Rooms’ Update Adds A Killer New Feature

Bigscreen ‘Big Rooms’ Update Adds A Killer New Feature

A new “Big Rooms” update to desktop sharing app Bigscreen will allow a host to share their computer screen with dozens of people in VR.

Since it launched in March 2016, Bigscreen offered rooms where up to four people could share their desktops with each other. Some major updates shipped since then, including high quality video streaming and a giant theater screen so people could enjoy better movies and TV shows together. The “Big Rooms” update, though, represents a major expansion for the software. Now hosts can have a movie night with a much larger group of people or stream a game to an intimate but still relatively sizable audience. Instead of everyone seeing everyone else’s screen, in these larger rooms only the host shares their screen. The smaller rooms where everyone shares are still there as well.

Founder Darshan Shankar says he originally built Bigscreen with encrypted peer-to-peer functionality, so content and voice chat shared inside the software is more private and doesn’t touch Bigscreen’s servers. This feature is still included with the larger rooms. Apps like Hulu on Gear VR allow people wearing the headsets to watch a TV show together, but each person needs to have a paid Hulu account to make that work. Facebook’s Oculus included a “Virtual Living Room” in its licensing terms so half a dozen people could watch a movie together that one of them purchased. Bigscreen bypasses each of these limitations, effectively collapsing space to bring faraway friends close together in VR. Bigscreen is no different from having multiple computers in the same room together.

There are other apps like Virtual Desktop and more recently Oculus’ own Dash that allow people to operate their desktop in VR. Bigscreen stands alone, however, in offering a compelling social experience where you can share anything on your computer’s screen. We’ve used Bigscreen to play games like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds so we could have the kind of social experience you get packing several computers into the same room at a LAN party, and Bigscreen is working with movie studios to host film screenings in VR.

That last part is interesting because as VR grows alongside Bigscreen’s user base and feature set it could raise some interesting questions regarding copyright infringement, privacy and individual freedom in VR.

The “Big Rooms” update is available to some users today and rolling out widely in the coming days. According to a post by Shankar, the number of friends you can invite to the room is dependent on your upload bandwidth.

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‘Bigscreen’s’ New “Big Rooms” Support up to 12 Users, Update Overhauls Performance

Bigscreen, the social VR app that lets you mirror your desktop monitor in virtual reality, and share it with friends, has received a new update which adds three new “Big Room” environments which support up to 12 players simultaneously (up from the previous four). The host of a Big Room can broadcast anything from their PC for all others to see, essentially creating a giant viewing party.

Update (2/15/18): Bigscreen today rolled out the ‘Big Rooms Update‘ to all users, allowing anyone to host a Big Room in one of three new environments. In Big Rooms, only the host can share their desktop (in normal sized rooms, everyone can share their desktops together); Bigscreen advises that the host will require upload bandwidth of at least 10 Mbps.

In addition to Big Room access for all, the update also brings what the company calls “significant” CPU and GPU performance improvements. This was achieved with most of the rooms being rebuilt for more efficient rendering. Furthermore, while each additional user in a room could add 5–15% more CPU usage, new users now cost almost no additional CPU work, according to the company.

Original Article (12/14/17): Since its 2016 launch, Bigscreen has supported up to 4 people per room, making the experiences decidedly more intimate than some of its social VR contemporaries. Still, the app is so far unique in its ability to let up to 4 users stream their own monitors to each other, allowing for smaller shared viewing sessions and “virtual LAN parties,” as the company puts it.

Image courtesy Bigscreen

While the app has improved its ease-of-use, avatar builder, and has been overhauled to bring streaming video quality to a max of 1080p 30 fps, the number of users allowed in a single room has remained the same.

These regular 4-person rooms will still exist moving forward, but now you have the choice of creating a normal room, or a ‘Big Room’, which will give the room’s creator sole access to the main viewing screen, letting you stream a movie, create a virtual meetup or conference, or watch a livestream of an eSports tournament with a much larger number of users.

Although the official announcement doesn’t specify the exact max number of users allowed in one room, the Big Rooms update is said to support “dozens” of people in the same shared space.

a ‘Big Room’ hosted on the penthouse roof, image courtesy Bigscreen

Founder and CEO of Bigscreen Darshan Shankar says that all rooms are peer-to-peer encrypted, meaning both voice chat and desktop screens “stream directly to friends in the room. Your data doesn’t stream through our servers, which is great for privacy. You can invite many friends into your Big Room, depending on your Internet speed (upload bandwidth).”

You can download Bigscreen for free on Steam for Vive and Rift, or Oculus Home for Rift.

The post ‘Bigscreen’s’ New “Big Rooms” Support up to 12 Users, Update Overhauls Performance appeared first on Road to VR.

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Bigscreen: Nintento Switch und Xbox One in VR spielen

Bigscreen ermöglicht die Darstellung des eigenen Bildschirminhalts in einem virtuellen Wohnzimmer und ist damit mehr als erfolgreich. Denn das Unternehmen konnte sich im letzten Monat Finanzierungen in Höhe von 11 Millionen US-Dollar sichern. Zudem wird die VR-App regelmäßig mit Updates versorgt. Nun zeigen die Entwickler ihren Erfindergeist und demonstrieren, wie man mit ein wenig zusätzlicher Hardware Nintendos neuste Konsole – die Nintendo Switch – innerhalb der VR nutzen kann.

Bigscreen – Nintendo Switch in der VR auf einer Kinoleinwand spielen

Die Entwickler von Bigscreen veröffentlichten in einem Blogpost, wie man mit ein wenig Aufwand und einer Capture Card seine Nintendo-Switch- oder Xbox-One-Games in der VR spielen kann. Die Inspiration dafür nahm einer der Verantwortlichen aus seinem lange gehegten Wunsch, seine Konsolen einmal auf einer riesigen Kinoleinwand zu benutzen. Da dies jedoch seine monetären Kapazitäten übersteigt, musste er auf andere Weise kreativ werden und nutzte Bigscreen für seine Zwecke. Das Ergebnis zeigt sich hier:

Dabei kann man die Größe des Bildschirms beliebig anpassen. Das Ganze funktioniert folgendermaßen: Zunächst benötigt man eine Capture Card – die Entwickler nutzten eine Blackmagic-Karte – sowie eine Nintendo Switch (oder Xbox One). Außerdem natürlich eine VR-Brille, wie die Oculus Rift, HTC Vive oder Windows MR-Brille sowie einen leistungsstarken PC. Mit einem zweiten Bildschirm wird die Einrichtung einfacher, er ist jedoch nicht zwingend nötig.

Zuerst muss die Capture Card eingerichtet werden und das Programm Open Broadcast Studio (OBS) installiert sein, um den HDMI-Input der Capture Card auf dem Desktop anzuzeigen. Innerhalb der kostenlosen Software müssen Anwender nun folgende Schritte durchführen:

  • OBS starten und eine Input-Quelle durch das “+” hinzufügen.
  • Video Capture Card auswählen.
  • In Video Settings die Auflösung auf die entsprechende Konsole anpassen (Nintendo Switch = 720p60 | Xbox One = 1080p60).
  • Abspeichern und die Konsole starten.
  • Nach kurzer Zeit sollte OBS die Inhalte der Konsole anzeigen. Die Anzeige lässt sich nun nach den eigenen Wünschen anpassen.Bigscreen-OBS-Nintendo-Switch
  • VR-Brille bereit machen, Steam und Bigscreen starten
  • Mit der Maus innerhalb der Preview Area von OBS mit Rechtsklick auf die Konsolendarstellung klicken und Fullscreen Projector (Preview) auswählen. Daraufhin mit der Tastenkombination ALT + TAB in Bigscreen wechseln.Bigscreen-Nintendo-Switch-OBS
  • Nun sollte das Spiel der Konsole innerhalb von Bigscreen sichtbar sein. Nun die gewünschte Umgebung auswählen und loslegen.

Falls es nicht auf Anhieb funktioniert, muss man etwas mit den verschiedenen Optionen herumspielen. Beispielsweise kann auch die Deinterlacting-Option (Rechtsklick in OBS Preview Area) helfen, falls das Bild flimmert.

Auch das nächste Projekt ist bereits geplant. So möchte der Entwickler einen Multiplayer-Bigscreen-Raum erstellen, indem man beispielsweise Mario Kart auf einem gigantischen Splitscreen gegeneinander spielen kann.

(Quelle: Bigscreen VR Blog)

Der Beitrag Bigscreen: Nintento Switch und Xbox One in VR spielen zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

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‘Bigscreen’ Lets You Stream Console Games in VR – Nintendo Switch, Xbox One & PS4

It’s not every day you get to play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) on a movie theater-sized screen, but the developers at the social screen mirroring VR app Bigscreen have written a handy guide on how to play Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, or PlayStation 4 from the comfort of your own virtual theater.

The Bigscreen team has already published a rough guide on how to stream games from consoles like Xbox One and PS4 through a few platform-specific apps, but because the Nintendo Switch doesn’t have any such streaming app, you’ll need a capture card to port in the console’s signal to your PC.

You can catch a more comprehensive guide here which goes into greater detail. Here’s a quick recap of what you’ll need to get started to start streaming you console into VR.

  • A capture card (like this Blackmagic one) for Switch, Remote Play app for PS4, or Windows 10 Xbox app for Xbox One
  • One of the above consoles
  • An HTC Vive, Oculus Rift or a Windows Mixed Reality headset
  • A powerful desktop or laptop
  • Optional: A second screen to make setting up easier
SEE ALSO
'Bigscreen' Overhaul Brings High-Quality Multiplayer Video Streaming, More Users Per-room to Follow

The devs suggest using Open Broadcast Studio (OBS) to display your console’s streamed content in full screen. OBS includes a nifty ‘Video Capture Device’ streaming option, so Switch users can directly view the signal on their PC monitor too.

After a bit of fiddling with OBS and resizing the preview window to take up your entire screen (again, check out the full guide), you can effectively mirror your console to your PC, and then mirror that into VR for everyone to see.

Because Bigscreen is social app, you could hypothetically play multiplayer console exclusives like Mario Kart 8 (2014) with another person providing they follow the same setup process and own the game/console too. While the virtual LAN party concept may be lost on some in the age of online gaming, being able to sit next to your friend and have that casual gaming experience like you would at home (or in space) is really what VR is all about; bringing people together and letting them do awesome things no matter what the stakes.

The post ‘Bigscreen’ Lets You Stream Console Games in VR – Nintendo Switch, Xbox One & PS4 appeared first on Road to VR.

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We Played PUBG In VR Using Bigscreen And It Was Surprisingly Good

We Played PUBG In VR Using Bigscreen And It Was Surprisingly Good

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) is a worldwide phenomenon. It seems like every month it breaks new ground for sales, concurrent active users, and any other stat used to measure popularity on gaming platforms like Steam. Not only have millions of people bought PUBG while it’s still in Early Access, but they continue to play it as well.  As of right now VR doesn’t have its PUBG equivalent experience. There are a handful of high-quality shooters out there and a few games that try and deliver a survival-focused experience, but nothing of the large-scale Battle Royale variety that PUBG caters to.

In PUBG 100 players parachute down onto an island on a quest for survival. You’ve got to plunder houses, scavenge for supplies, and try to outlast the 99 other players. The game can be played either alone, with a partner, or with a squad of up to four total players. As the match progresses an electric force field slowly closes in on the map, narrowing the play space, and forcing players to confront one another. It’s a pulse-pounding experience but when you finally do come out on top there’s nothing quite like it.

As a replacement for the lack of real VR support in PUBG we decided to set it up in Bigscreen to create the illusion of split-screen multiplayer. Our Senior Editor, Ian Hamilton, and I sat beside one another in Bigscreen’s Home Theater environment and aligned our screens out in front of us. Since we were playing simulataneously using the app’s impressive desktop streaming technology, it felt just like we were playing in real-time right next to each other.

We also could have tried playing on a first-person server, made the virtual screen really large and tried simulating playing in VR, but we decided not to try that for this experiment.

You can see the gameplay up in the video at the top of this post (or right here) and also watch us play Overwatch with a similar Bigscreen setup last year. Have you been playing PUBG too? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments below!

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Bigscreen Raises $11 million to Expand its Virtual Desktop Platform

Bigscreen Inc. launched its virtual reality (VR) virtual desktop platform Bigscreen Beta back in 2016, since then it’s grown adding all sorts of features to watch or play content as well as socialise. Today, the company has announced the closure of a Series A funding round securing the company $11 million USD of investment.

The round was led by True Ventures with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, both of which took part in a funding round earlier in the year which raised $3 million. As part of the round Toni Schneider – partner at True Ventures – will be joining Bigscreen Inc’s board.

Bigscreen will be using the funding to accelerate the development and expansion of its platform even though it didn’t need the cash. In a blog statement, founder and CEO of Bigscreen Darshan Shankar explained: “As a small, fully remote team of developers around the world, we’ve spent very little of our $3 million seed financing. With several years of runway ahead of us, we didn’t need to raise additional funding.

“However, over the past year, Bigscreen has grown significantly to more than a quarter million users. In just the past few months–led by several major product updates – our core metrics grew over 300%. Our power users spend 20–30+ hours using Bigscreen every week, and many users have spent more than 1,000 hours in Bigscreen.”

If you’ve not tried Bigscreen Beta before it’s freely available for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift headsets, and it’ll be a launch title for Windows Mixed Reality devices when they arrive next week.

For the latest Bigscreen Beta updates, keep reading VRFocus.

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‘Bigscreen’ Raises $11 Million Series A Funding to Grow, Improve & Expand Services to More AR/VR Headsets

The team behind Bigscreen, the app that lets you view and share your desktop in social VR, today announced they’ve raised $11 million in Series A financing. The funding round, which comes only a year after their initial $3 million seed round, was led by True Ventures with participation from Andreessen Horowitz.

The company details the news in a blogpost, say that as part of the financing round, Bigscreen Inc. will also bring on True Ventures Partner Toni Schneider as a board member.

Since the announcement of the seed round in February, which was led by Andreessen Horowitz and included participation by True Ventures, Presence Capital, Ludlow Ventures, David Bettner, and SV Angel, the mostly remote team says they’ve used thus far “very little of [the] $3 million seed financing,” and have several years of runway ahead of them.

image courtesy Bigscreen

According to CEO Darshan Shankar, the app’s overall usership has grown to “more than a quarter million users,” saying that thanks to several major product updates, their core metrics grew over 300% in only a few month’s time. Shankar says that Bigscreen’s power users spend 20–30+ hours every week in the app (not specified if solo viewing or social), and many users have spent more than 1,000 hours overall.

Bigscreen features both online multiuser spaces for impromptu movie watching and gameplaying for up to 4 users, and also functions as a virtual desktop, projecting your display out so you can do anything you’d normally would on you monitor.

The apps has recently gone through several major updates including a much-needed improvement to the simultaneous streaming quality, pushing output to 1080p resolution at 30 fps. The app currently supports Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, OSVR, and as a part of SteamVR integration, will also likely support Windows “Mixed Reality” VR headsets.

“We now need to grow the team in order to improve the product and expand the Bigscreen platform to more VR/AR devices,” Shankar says.

The post ‘Bigscreen’ Raises $11 Million Series A Funding to Grow, Improve & Expand Services to More AR/VR Headsets appeared first on Road to VR.

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‘Bigscreen’ Raises $11 Million Series A Funding to Grow, Improve & Expand Services to More AR/VR Headsets

The team behind Bigscreen, the app that lets you view and share your desktop in social VR, today announced they’ve raised $11 million in Series A financing. The funding round, which comes only a year after their initial $3 million seed round, was led by True Ventures with participation from Andreessen Horowitz.

The company details the news in a blogpost, say that as part of the financing round, Bigscreen Inc. will also bring on True Ventures Partner Toni Schneider as a board member.

Since the announcement of the seed round in February, which was led by Andreessen Horowitz and included participation by True Ventures, Presence Capital, Ludlow Ventures, David Bettner, and SV Angel, the mostly remote team says they’ve used thus far “very little of [the] $3 million seed financing,” and have several years of runway ahead of them.

image courtesy Bigscreen

According to CEO Darshan Shankar, the app’s overall usership has grown to “more than a quarter million users,” saying that thanks to several major product updates, their core metrics grew over 300% in only a few month’s time. Shankar says that Bigscreen’s power users spend 20–30+ hours every week in the app (not specified if solo viewing or social), and many users have spent more than 1,000 hours overall.

Bigscreen features both online multiuser spaces for impromptu movie watching and gameplaying for up to 4 users, and also functions as a virtual desktop, projecting your display out so you can do anything you’d normally would on you monitor.

The apps has recently gone through several major updates including a much-needed improvement to the simultaneous streaming quality, pushing output to 1080p resolution at 30 fps. The app currently supports Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, OSVR, and as a part of SteamVR integration, will also likely support Windows “Mixed Reality” VR headsets.

“We now need to grow the team in order to improve the product and expand the Bigscreen platform to more VR/AR devices,” Shankar says.

The post ‘Bigscreen’ Raises $11 Million Series A Funding to Grow, Improve & Expand Services to More AR/VR Headsets appeared first on Road to VR.