Startup Bigscreen closed an $11 million Series A funding round, adding to the $3 million the company already received.
For those unfamiliar, Bigscreen started by building a screen-sharing service allowing people to meet up in VR and share whatever is happening on their computer’s screen. This could mean watching a Netflix movie, playing a videogame or working on a project together. The round was led by existing investors including True Ventures with participation from Andreessen Horowitz. Founder Darshan Shankar wrote in an email the plan is to build a 15-20 person team by the end of next year.
“We will continue to operate conservatively and remain a small team,” he wrote. “The funding secures our future and ensures that Bigscreen will be here for the long run.”
Shankar, in a blog post, revealed some notable metrics:
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–ourcore 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.
Die VR-App Bigscreen überträgt euren Bildschirminhalt in ein virtuelles Wohnzimmer und ermöglicht das Teilen der eigenen Inhalte in Echtzeit. Somit ist sowohl die Übertragung des Desktops möglich, wie auch das direkte Online Streaming von Videos oder Spielen von der eigenen Festplatte. Im Juli brachten die Entwickler bereits das Cinema Update heraus und kündigten weitere Verbesserungen an. Nun veröffentlichten sie das Avatar Update, welches durch neue Avatare und Features die soziale Komponente der VR-App verbessern soll. Auch im Bereich der Performanz hat sich einiges getan.
Bigscreen Avatar Update bringt neue Avatare und Performanzverbesserungen
Das Avatar Update für die VR-App Bigscreen vom gleichnamigen Entwicklerstudio bringt einige Verbesserungen und Upgrades mit sich. Ab sofort werden die Avatare innerhalb der VR nicht mehr körperlos dargestellt, sondern erhalten nun endlich Torsos. Deshalb wird man zukünftig keine fliegenden Köpfe mehr sehen, sondern kann zwischen sieben verschiedenen Körperformen auswählen. Zudem lassen sich die Torsos mit über 100 verschiedenen Kleidungsstücken wie T-Shirts oder Hoodies ausstatten.
Zudem haben die Entwickler die Steuerung an die Motion-Controller der unterschiedlichen VR-Brillen angepasst, um eine intuitivere Eingabe zu ermöglichen. Beispielsweise ist es mit der neuen Poking-Funktion durch einfaches Anstupsen möglich, innerhalb der Tablet UI oder dem virtuellen Keyboard Funktionen auszuwählen.
Der Bigscreen-Monitor erhielt eine Menüleiste mit Verknüpfungen, um eine einfache und schnellere Ausrichtung und Auswahl zu gewährleisten. Zusätzlich gibt es neue interaktive Tools, wie beispielsweise einen Laserpointer oder einen Selfie-Stick.
Auch im Bereich der Performanz hat sich einiges getan: Besonders Besitzer von AMD-Grafikkarten dürfen sich über eine stark verbesserte Stabilität freuen, denn die Entwickler konnten diverse Fehler beheben, die für Instabilität mit den entsprechenden GPUs sorgten.
Bisher befand sich die App zumindest im Oculus Store noch in der Early-Access-Phase. Diese wurde nun mit dem Avatar Update offiziell beendet. Jedoch war die App auf Steam niemals im Early Access und sie steht auch weiterhin unter dem Namen Bigscreen Beta zum Download zur Verfügung.
BigScreen Inc’s popular eponymous virtual reality (VR) application BigScreen for HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality has received a new update.
The free to download app, currently undergoing a long Beta period has just announced ‘The Avatar Update’ which, as the name suggests, primarily focuses on developing the ways users can represent themselves whilst using the app. With a selection torso designs for male and female body types, as well as one which is specifically neutral. All off which can be highly customised with whatever look you choose from all manner of clothing options.
This is not the only change however as the developers have also confirming an overhaul to the ways the app’s design is applied. Making interaction via controller, both with new and existing menus and the world around you, far more natural and intuitive. Feedback from users has also led the team to identify a number of bugs, specifically ones causing instability within the app for those users utilizing AMD graphics cards.
Whilst the app is still not ready to shed its Beta label, the update is significant enough that BigScreen has also announced that it will, at least, be moving out of Early Access on Oculus Home. Further updates are of course planned and VRFocus will bring you news about these as they are revealed. You can check out the Avatar update in action with the video below.
It was a hard decision, but you’ve decided to go with the HTC Vive as your first ‘serious’ VR headset, a room-scale device that released early 2016 as a result of a decisive collaboration with Valve. Here we take a look at our top 5 games for Vive, and a little more information you might need to get you started.
The Vive is a powerful ally in the fight against marketplace fragmentation, as it draws content from Steam, Viveport—and with the help of Revive, a software hack that lets you play Oculus exclusives. Right out of the box, you’ll have a room-scale setup, something that the Rift requires at least one additional sensor to claim, all the while delivering comparable standing and seated experiences as well.
Before we go any further though, you’ll find that you have access to a number of games on our Best 5 Games for Oculus Rift list thanks to the Revive hack, so make sure to check out some of the guaranteed fresh Oculus exclusives, and all the games that support Rift and Vive equally well. In any case, all of the games below are natively supported for Vive and purchasable through Steam.
5 – Moss
Once a PSVR exclusive, Moss (2017) has now made its way to PC VR headsets, letting you control your cute little mouse buddy, Quill, on your adventures through a large and dangerous world. Stylistically, Moss hits a home run with its impressive diorama-style visuals and interactive elements that lets you, the player (aka ‘The Reader’) move puzzle pieces around and also take over the minds of enemies as Quill slashes through the world to recover her lost uncle. Puzzles may not be the most difficult, but Moss has effectively set up a universe begging for more sequels to further flesh out the enticing world Polyarc Games has created.
While Moss is primarily a seated game, you’ll enjoy it just the same regardless of the Vive’s room-scale abilities.
See why we gave it a [7.9/10] in our review on PSVR.
4 – Budget Cuts
Budget Cuts (2018), the first-person stealth VR game from Stockholm-based indie studio Neat Corporation, first released came into the world via a free demo in 2016. The demo, which quickly became a breakout success in the early days of consumer VR, demonstrated a unique portal-teleportation mechanic, that, when married with the ability to throw knives at robot guards, spelled an instant hit—at least from a basic gameplay perspective. Two years later, the full release of Budget Cuts is here and it’s definitely been worth the wait.
At the time of this writing, it still suffers from some bugs. Although when everything goes right, Budget Cuts makes the top 5 cut for delivering Vive players a uniquely room-scale stealth assassin game that will have you cowering for your life underneath virtual filing cabinets.
Find out why we gave Budget Cuts a [9.2/10] in our review.
3 – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR
Bethesda’s Skyrim VR (2017) was once a PSVR exclusive, but ever since it made its way to Steam (Vive, Rift, Windows VR), the game has really come into its own on PC VR platforms. Thanks to the average VR-ready gaming PC’s ability to render the open world at a much higher resolution, you’ll really feel like you’ve stepped into the world of Skyrim, replete with trolls, dragons, and a seemingly endless list of things to do and places to explore.
Created by Prague-based indie team Beat Studio (ex-Hyperbolic Magnetism), Beat Saber(2018) is a funky and incredibly stylish rhythm game that will have you slicing blocks to the beat of high-BPM dance music. While the idea is simple, the execution is magnificent. Beat Saber gives you 10 songs, each with four difficulty levels to master, the highest being expert which will have you feeling like a 21st century techno-jedi.
Based on the PC/console version of SUPERHOT (2016), the strategy-based first-person shooter was re-imagined from the ground-up for VR headsets in SUPERHOT VR (2016). As an entirely new game in the same vein as its flatscreen counterpart, the iconic red baddies (and their bullets) move only when you do, so you can line up your shot, punch a guy in the face, dodge a bullet, and toss a bottle across the room, shattering their red-glass heads in what feels intensely immersive and satisfying—because you’re doing it all with your own two hands. That and you’ll feel like a badass no matter whose basement you live in.
Fallout 4 VR: Fallout 4 (2015), the post-apocalyptic adventure from Bethesda Game Studios is here in its entirety in VR. Like Skyrim VR, it gives you a vast open world to explore, but suffers from some optimization issues that require the user to tweak before really enjoying it.
The Gallery: Heart of the Emberstone: It’s a longer, stronger and more immersive experience than the first in the series, The Gallery: Call of the Starseed (2016), and shows that Cloudhead Games has put in the hours producing a visually and emotionally adept story that feels like it hasn’t outworn its welcome. Puzzles are innovative, and while they aren’t particularly difficult, they always reward you with something worth pursuing.
The Mage’s Tale: Crafting elemental magic, exploring foreboding dungeons, battling giants and stealing their treasure. There’s all of this and more in The Mage’s Tale. Althoughstory-wise the game comes too close to campy and played out for its own good, it’s still a solid investment for the enterprising young wizard among you.
Vanishing Realms – Letting you battle an army of skeleton demons through an archetypal fantasy world, Indimo Labs’ sword-swinging adventure game is likened to ‘Zelda in VR’ by pushing the boundaries of what VR is capable of and delivering that much sought after sword and shield combat experience.
Raw Data: Raw Data is a heavy-hitting, fast-paced game that’s more than just a simple wave shooter. While it presses all the right buttons with atmosphere and feel, the game is on the bleeding edge of virtual interaction, which sometimes doesn’t work as well as it should. Despite its technical flaws, it’s one of the best VR shooters for HTC Vive and Oculus Touch out currently.
Arizona Sunshine – Vertigo Games’s Arizona Sunshine (2016) puts you in the midst of the archetypal zombie apocalypse, and even though we gave it a [7.5/10], it proves to be a solid entry into the FPS genre. Suffering some finicky controls and an even more finicky multiplayer, this zombie shooter almost made our list.
Subnautica–Out of Steam Early Access this year, Subnautica lets youpilot your own submarine, craft your underwater base, explore lush coral reefs, volcanoes, cave systems, and survive the harsh realities of the deep by out-smarting the game’s sometimes dangerous fauna.
GORN – Games that require you to use hand-held weapons don’t seem to work as well as shooters in VR. Maybe it’s the lack of haptic-feedback, but that certainly doesn’t stop them from being immensely fun just the same. Set in some barbaric future where floating heads look down as you smash topsy-turvy, weapon-wielding gladiators, Gorn proves to be charmingly ridiculous.
Onward – A fan favorite with a hardcore playerbase, the OD green of mil-sim shooters Onward gives you that VR battle you’ve always wanted, including tactical team-based gameplay and plenty of guns. The game itself is still fairly early in development, as it doesn’t have ranked matches yet, making it a bit intimidating from a beginner’s perspective. It’s creation is a true feat of will as it’s amazingly maintained by a singular developer.
Pavlov VR – Incorporating classic maps from games such as N64’s Goldeneye and Counter-Strike, Pavlov serves up a slice of familiar gameplay in a new VR setting. Featuring bots, and several modes including search-and-destroy and casual fast-paced solo play, Pavlov is the CQB death match standard FPS fans have been waiting for.
Project Cars & Project Cars 2 – You probably don’t have access to a garage full of super cars, but even if you do you’ll probably appreciate the ability to practice speeding around the track without ever having to leave home. The second in line, Project Cars 2 has a completely overhauled physics and tire models, making it a more true to life racing experience. You certainly can’t go wrong with either though!
Windlands – Originally developed in the early days of the Oculus development kits, Windlands has since added motion controller support to its fantastical ‘castle in the sky’ setting that lets you naturally grappling hook your way across what ultimately plays out as a giant parkour puzzle. It’s an intense experience, but well worth the feeling you’ll get from conquering the highest reaches of this beautiful and unique game.
If you didn’t see your favorite game here, let us know in the comments! This is a continually evolving list, so check back for the latest in Road to VR’s top Vive games.
Update (July 7th, 2018): We’ve done a long-due overhaul of the list, and bumped a few previous games to the honorable mentions list.
It used to be that the only way to play videogames with your friends was to grab a pad, take a seat on the couch next to them, and hit start. Over the years the advent of online gaming slowly eroded the appeal of local multiplayer, but many still long for the thrills that come from having two or more people competing in the same room, and not just over voice chat. Dominique Vande Walle is one of those people; he even got out of gaming for a while when online competition became mainstream. But, thanks to the Oculus Rift and Bigscreen, Walle has recently reconnected with his past.
He’s since spent over 1000 hours inside Bigscreen.
Walle loves fighting games. He’s a fan of everything from casual brawlers like Super Smash Bros to more hardcore series like Soul Calibur. He has a particular love for 2007’s Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3, one of the better videogame tie-ins to the anime behemoth. He’d play these games a lot as a kid, but didn’t see the appeal of playing them online.
“As it progressed local split-screen games started to die out a bit,” Walle tells me. “Everyone was playing some game online over the internet and I lost any interest in gaming except for your occasional Mortal Kombat match at a friend’s house.”
What Walle did have an interest in, though, was virtual reality. Walle was an owner of the Oculus Rift’s second development kit (DK2), a device the company made readily available to anyone. He describes the two years in which DK2 was in circulation as fun, but lacking in compelling content. That changed when the consumer Rift arrived in 2016.
“Litte by little it started to dawn on me that I had a device now capable of putting me into a setting with random strangers from over all the world,” Walle says. “And those people were interacting with everything I say, every single one of them has a different background, culture, whatever silly story to tell you.”
Then he came across Bigscreen.
For those that don’t know, Bigscreen is a sort of virtual desktop app. It allows users to bring up a virtual screen in a number of environments and interact with their PC applications from inside VR. You can scroll through Twitter, do a little work, watch videos and, yes, even play traditional 2D games. Better yet, the app supports multiple users that can summon their own screens.
Two players could boot up copies of any online game and effectively play them as if they were split-screen multiplayer games. Most VR apps have barely 10 hours of content, but by simulating your desktop Bigscreen gives you access to an unending amount of software within VR.
“The moment I saw their concept I knew that was going to be an application made for me,” Walle says. Bigscreen launched in beta in April last year, though Walle got his Rift in May.
Naturally, Walle got Tenkaichi 3 up and running on the platform with the help of the Dolphin emulator. He got online play working, too. And that was pretty much that; playing one of his all-time favorite games with anyone in the world as if they were sitting right next to him was a dream come true. He meets up with his friend to fight in public rooms that anyone can come and watch in. You can see one of their matches below.
Walle loves the social discovery behind Bigscreen. He’s fine when people pop into his rooms and then leave, but he’s found someone that shares his love of gaming, someone that he feels he could play all day with. Judging by his hour count, they do.
“Bigscreen eliminates the borders in the world, you get to see and meet new people all over the world whom I would never have met otherwise in my life,” Walle says. “No way would I have a daily opponent from Sweden right now if it wasn’t for Bigscreen and VR in general.”
He’s quick to stress he’s not addicted to the app, though. “I am just very lucky to have a certain work schedule that allows me at least 4 hours spare time alone each day, so it’s easy to get some gaming time in there with a buddy.”
Even then he’s surprised he’s racked up that much time; he’s only spent a fraction of that time inside other VR apps, and he doesn’t complain of tired eyes or any kind side-effects from being in a headset for so long.
Going forward, Walle is eager for the arrival of second generation headsets to help push Bigscreen even further, but he’s entirely happy with it in its current form. I have to say I’m surprised; when I heard about how long he’d spent in VR, I’d assumed he’d been using Bigscreen for far more than play time. But all it’s really done is serve as the platform for him to continue what he loves doing most; no different to anyone that’s spent 1000 hours playing on any other console or platform.
And that’s really the key behind social VR; it gets the complications of the physical and digital worlds out of the way. No distance to travel and no complicated apps to navigate, just yourself in a virtual space with your friends. When you look at it that way, spending 1000 hours in Bigscreen seems like an entirely normal thing to do.
Oh, and Walle wanted to give a special shout out to his girlfriend, who puts up with his VR obsession. I think that’s definitely worth a nod.
Bigscreen ist ein praktisches Programm, um euren Bildschirminhalt in einem virtuellen Wohnzimmer darzustellen und die Inhalte mit anderen Personen in Echtzeit zu teilen. Zudem ermöglicht es nicht nur Online Content zu streamen, sondern auch die Übertragung des Desktops. Damit können auch lokale Dateien, wie Videos, Spiele oder Bilder von der Festplatte gezeigt werden. Nun veröffentlicht das Unternehmen ihr bisher größtes Update seit dem Betastart im Jahr 2016. Entsprechend bringt das Cinema Update einige interessante Neuerungen mit sich.
Cinema Update bringt neue Umgebung, 1080p Qualität und weitere Neuerungen
Mit dem bisher größten Update von Bigscreen fügen die Entwickler einige spannende Verbesserungen hinzu. So wird unter anderem eine neue Kinoumgebung integriert. Doch auch die Performanz und Streamingqualität soll dank Update besser sein.
Die neue Umgebung in Form eines Heimkinos beinhaltet eine drei Meter hohe Kinoleinwand mit hyper-realistischer dynamischer Beleuchtung. Der Bildschirm wirft dabei auch Lichtstrahlen auf die Wände und Sitze, wodurch ein echtes Kinogefühl aufkommt. Sobald der Bildschirm schwarz wird, gilt das auch für den kompletten Raum, denn dann sieht man gar nichts mehr. Um die Immersion perfekt zu machen, werden außerdem insgesamt 40 AI gesteuerte Bots (NPCs) hinzugefügt, was das Kino richtig lebendig macht.
Im Bereich der Performanz wurde auch einiges aufgewertet, denn Bigscreen setzt nun auf eine neue C++-Engine, die signifikant weniger CPU, GPU und Ram beansprucht. Dies gilt sowohl für den Singleplayer- als auch den Multiplayer-Modus. Dabei kündigten die Entwickler an, dass sich hier auch zukünftig noch so einiges tun wird.
Auch beim Streaming gibt es einige Innovationen, denn die Einführung einer neuen Streaming-Technologie sorgt für eine makellose Übertragung bei 1080p Videos mit einer dauerhaften Gewährleistung von 30 FPS. Sämtliche Streams sind dabei peer-to-peer, privat und verschlüsselt. Das bedeutet, die persönlichen Dateien werden direkt in den Multiplayer-Raum der Person übertragen und nicht über andere Server weitergeleitet.
Verbesserungen der Soundqualität und zukünftige Anpassungen
Auch an der Soundqualität wurde geschraubt: Ab sofort wird in Stereoqualität (statt bisher in Mono) übertragen. Dazu wird eine höhere Soundqualität dargeboten, da die Bitrate erhöht wurde.
Doch die Entwickler ruhen sich auf diesen Optimierungen nicht aus, denn sie kündigten bereits weitere Verbesserungen an: Es sind bereits neue Umgebungen geplant, die in Zukunft integriert werden sollen. Auch in den Bereichen Performanz, Streaming und Audio wird weitergearbeitet. Zudem soll es zukünftige Community Events, wie beispielsweise gemeinsame Film- oder Spielenächte geben.
When we first wrote about Bigscreen over a year ago it represented something we hadn’t seen before. Users were able to invite friends into private virtual rooms where they could stream content together in real-time. Not only that, but it allowed users to stream content from their desktop directly, not just from things available online. That meant you could play a game installed on your hard drive, watch videos saved on your computer, view images, work together on projects, and anything else.
Today, Bigscreen is launching what it’s billing as its “biggest update yet” with the Cinema Update. The biggest feature here is the inclusion of high-fidelity, 1080p quality, seamless, real-time streaming in a multiplayer environment. You really have to experience it to udnerstand what that means for VR streaming, but here is a quick video:
Yesterday, Darshan Shankar walked me through the update in Bigscreen. We loaded into the experience’s new Cinema environment (shown above) which simulated sitting in a huge movie theater wit 40 A.I. bots that help make sure you don’t feel creepy and alone. There were dozens of spots for us to pick from for seating and the huge 100-foot screen really was a sight to behold.
When the screen didn’t have any colors or images, the movie theater was completely and utterly pitch black. Then, as images popped onto the screen the light would bounce and dance around the walls and chairs. An explosion would send orange and yellow and red lights out to paint the setting.
My favorite new feature of this update, personally, is that now there is finally full support for seamless desktop audio streaming. Previously users had to install third-party plugins and play with the settings to get audio streaming to work well. Now, you just select an option from a menu and you’re good to go. We watched the new Ready Player One trailer in HD without any framerate loss.
While coding this update, Shankar joked with me that they had “accidentally created the world’s best streaming program” and I have trouble finding reasons to disagree. In fact, you can totally play PC games in split screen using Bigscreen too. Multiple streams, at 1080p, 30fps, all in VR, and no issues that I could see.
Games that are specifically developed for VR are always going to look and play the best in a VR headset, but let’s face it, most of us probably have huge libraries of traditional games, and you may be wondering “Can I play regular games on the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive?”—the answer is yes (with a few caveats), and here’s two ways you can do it.
VorpX (Most Immersive)
VorpX is a made-for-VR ‘3D injector’ which adapts non-VR games into a VR compatible view. The program supports both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, and works with “more than 150 DirectX 9, 10 and 11 games in stereoscopic 3D and many more without.” This list shows popular games which are known to work with VorpX.
For supported games, the program gives you a 3D view through the headset and headtracking (including positional tracking), which makes it feel like you’re looking around inside of the game. Some games don’t support positional tracking which means only head rotations will be tracked.
Although this can be an amazing way to play many of your favorite non-VR games in VR, the truth is that—depending upon the game—it won’t be as good as playing a made-for-VR game, for two major reasons.
First, games not specially made for VR will feature traditional movement like running with the keyboard and turning with the mouse. For many users, this sort of movement can lead to nausea, though sensitivity varies greatly from person to person and game to game.
Second, games not made for VR will do things to the game camera which are not comfortable when the game camera is your head (thanks to the headset): traditional games will often take control of the camera to zoom around during cutscenes, or send it falling or spinning when you die. In VR this can be quite uncomfortable, as if someone was taking your head and yanking it around. Non-VR games will also often attach a HUD to the camera as well as a gun, which will feel like those elements are ‘attached’ to your face, so as you turn your head your gun goes with it.
It’s possible to have a great experience in many games this way, especially if you spend some time tweaking VorpX’s variety of options (there’s plenty of guides out there to help you get the settings just right for specific games), but be weary of the fact that games not made to be played in VR can be less than comfortable when played in a VR headset.
Virtual Cinemas (Most Comfortable)
Instead of wrapping the view completely around you as if you were standing inside the game, another option is to play traditional games on a virtual cinema screen. This is great for playing non-VR games that aren’t comfortable or simply aren’t suited for a full VR mode (like games played from a top-down or side-scroller perspective). In such a mode you’ll see your game as if it was played on a big screen TV, which can actually be quite immersive depending upon how big you make the screen.
VorpX 3D Cinema Mode (Included with VorpX)
VorpX has a virtual cinema built-in, which is nice because it means you’ll have the ability to play many games in a full VR mode or a more comfortable mode on a virtual screen, all in one package.
SteamVR (Free)
SteamVR has its own built-in virtual cinema mode which Valve calls Desktop Theater. Inside you’ll see a big virtual display which can be resized. To launch games inside of SteamVR’s Desktop Theater, just launch SteamVR first (the little ‘VR’ icon at the top right of Steam), then launch a non-VR game from your library like usual (or use the VR interface). As far as we know, only games that support Steam Broadcasting are compatible.
Bigscreen (Free)
Bigscreen is another virtual cinema option with a cool twist. In addition to being able to see your computer desktop and play games on it in VR, in Bigscreen you can invite other VR players into your virtual space so that you can talk to each other and see each other’s screens, as if you were hanging out at a virtual LAN party. Bigscreen is available on both Steam and the Oculus Store, which means Rift and Vive players can play together.
Disclosure: Road to VR has an affiliate partnership with Vorpx.
Bigscreen is a social VR app which lets VR users bring their PC desktops into virtual reality, as if sitting at their computer next to friends or co-workers. Users inside of Bigscreen can see each other’s desktops which means you can watch movies or play games together. With Bigscreen still in beta, the streaming functionality has been hit or miss, but a new update promises to bring “flawless” 1080p streaming at 30 FPS to everyone.
Update (7/25/17): We got a chance to try out Bigscreen’s promised 1080p 30 FPS video streaming. While we can’t profess to have run any type of reliable metric to see empirically if it was working as advertised, visually there was little discernible difference between locally played 1080p 30FPS content (i.e. the verifiable target fidelity) and content streamed between two people. Whether it was watching two other people stream video contemporaneously in split-screen mode on the 100-foot cinema screen, or sharing smaller personal screens while sitting next to each other—it seemed to conform to the level of visual fidelity we expected. That said, minor hiccups did occur once or twice during initial video buffering where locally displayed video was superior to streamed video including a few dropped frames that we estimate dipped into 15-20 FPS territory, but over the course of testing several videos we saw these issues as few and far between. We were also told that there are still outstanding issues regarding global desktop audio, but we didn’t encounter anything during our demo—both with and without the Bigscreen staff—that would suggest anything showstopping. Tests were conducted with users chatting between California and Europe. The patch will be available today for Rift through the Oculus Store and HTC Vive and Rift through Steam.
Update (7/15/17): Bigscreen has confirmed the new update will launch for everyone on July 25th and has teased the update with a new GIF:
For those interested in helping to test the update ahead of the launch, Bigscreen invites you to join the Bigscreen Community chat server on Discord and join the private alpha test. The original article continues below.
Original Article (7/7/17): Your computer can do a million things—browse the web, watch YouTube, edit movies, create documents, send email, play games, and on and on—what if you could just bring your PC into virtual reality and join up with friends? Then you’d be in a room with your friends and their PCs, which can also do a million things. That’s the surprisingly simple idea that makes Bigscreen magical.
But, making it happen relies on being able to stream desktops between each user with solid performance. For many users using Bigscreen’s multiplayer mode, streaming screens has been sub-par, making desirable social activities like watching Netflix or playing games with friends impossible due to choppy framerates which could often look more like slideshows than moving video.
That’s all about to change, says Bigscreen founder Darshan Shankar. He and his team have been working on a major overhaul of the app’s streaming tech and a new version will bring smooth, high quality desktop streaming to all users. Shankar explains:
We’ve spent the past year rewriting our media engine and networking stack from scratch. Our new technology takes advantage of Nvidia and AMD graphics cards for hardware accelerated encoding and decoding, enabling flawless 1080p30 streaming for all Bigscreen Multiplayer users. Previously, Bigscreen multiplayer would perform poorly for some users and consume 80-100% of CPU. Our new tech doesn’t use the CPU or GPU resources that games use, and instead uses the dedicated video acceleration chips on the graphics cards. It’s a massive increase in performance and functionality.
The performance enhancements brought by the new streaming tech will do more than just make your friend’s screen smooth, it will also open the door to raising the current limitation of four users per room. Shankar says that another update following the streaming overhaul (in the next one or two months) will enable rooms supporting somewhere between 6 to 10 users at a time, and maybe even more down the road.
Image courtesy Bigscreen
Bigscreen users who use the app in single player as a VR desktop environment also have something to look forward to: optimizations from the overhaul can “reduce CPU usage by 50% and reduce GPU usage in some environments by 60%,” Shankar says.
The update will also come with expanded support for Windows 7 and laptops with Nvidia Optimus graphics, and will bring with it an IMAX-sized cinema environment with “real-time lighting and a new artificial intelligence NPC system.”
For those wanting to love Bigscreen, but struggling to do so because of streaming problems, the forthcoming update could be a defining moment. Shankar says the new version is in private alpha presently and is due out “in a couple weeks.”
Evidence for the human need to share experiences stretches back to the earliest cave paintings. Scenes from real life or the artist’s imagination were recreated and displayed for others to share. Social interactions have accompanied almost all communication platforms. Reading and writing facilitated theatre and the formal play, early movies facilitated the cinema industry, radio and television broadcasts resulted in families and friends huddled around a single device to consume sports and entertainment. This article explores how innovators are making Virtual Reality (VR) a social experience.
Social interaction within VR can be distilled into three core elements – speech, movement, and emotional expression. Speech is easily captured and communicated using a microphone and VOIP. All VR devices support capture of head movement, and many capture arm/ hand movement. A surprising amount of non-verbal communication can be inferred from these movements, particularly gestures and gesticulations. Whilst elements of body language can be communicated in VR, the communication of emotional expression is lacking. As a work-around some VR social apps are relying on user-triggered emoticons and arm movement tracking to imply feelings and reactions. We’ve seen some interesting demos from Oculus and others using cameras to capture mouth movements. Eye tracking will provide improved face to face interaction but eye tracking by itself is not sufficient.
Whilst we await the release of emotionally expressive VR, there are still a number of companies creating social platforms. One of the largest is AltspaceVR, founded by former SpaceX engineer Eric Romo. AltspaceVR is freemium software that supports high- and low-end VR headsets, as well as a 2D experience on computers and mobile. It allows users to chat, watch videos, and join a range of special events, from NBC News Q&A sessions to live music. Like many early social VR spaces, it’s similar to a VR-based Second Life –built less around sophisticated communication, and more around sharing experiences.
AltspaceVR focuses on simplicity and shared experiences.
For emotional interaction, Altspace focuses largely on voice and physical movement. As platform-agnostic software, it features many ways to communicate physical movement for social interaction – everything from simple controller-based movement, through to full-body motion tracking with Microsoft’s Kinect. However, this approach limits the sophistication of social interaction between platforms – users won’t often have equally elaborate set-ups, and so some modes of interaction might not be reciprocated. In terms of emotional expression Altspace supports a range of emoticons, largely selected by the user through a menu. It also supports eye tracking but, again, this is dependent on the VR platform being used supporting it. The main focus appears to be on connecting with friends and sharing experiences like live events or streamed video in a VR setting, which it does very effectively.
In real life, gaming is naturally a social experience and so it’s inevitable that social spaces are being built and enable playing together. The gaming community has always been quick to embrace new technology that allows them to share play time in new ways. As such, many social applications for VR are heavily game-based, offering up a variety of minigames and tools for users. For example, Sports Bar VR offers competitive pool, darts, and skeeball, Anyland invites users to add and tinker with anything (really, pretty much anything) to their avatars or environment, and Rec Room has online multiplayer paintball, dodgeball, disc golf, charades, and more. These games have simple avatars, often cartoony and without arms, but all players can communicate through voice, movement, emoticons, and hand-gestures. In Rec Room, a fist bump results in an explosion of light – physical interaction is used to perform actions, and now you’ve formed a private party to go play paintball.
Rec Room’s use of the game charades is great for showing the capacity for fun brought with physical interaction in the digital world; getting someone halfway across the world to correctly guess that you’re acting out the movie Jaws in your office is a strange but compelling pastime. VR gaming social spaces focus on the fun of physically interacting and exploring the world and other users around you, and anything they miss in the subtleties of communication are often compensated for with absurdity and silliness from fellow players.
Gaming spaces like Rec Room revel in communicating through exaggerated avatars and situations.
In April Facebook finally launched its own foray into social VR with Facebook Spaces. In Spaces, users are represented by a cartoon avatar, with customised hair, face, and clothing. Spaces integrates Facebook services heavily – users can share photos and videos, take their own inside the space (to share on Facebook, of course), play simple games, or call non-spaces users through Messenger.
Interaction in Facebook Spaces is simple, but effective.
Facebook Spaces is part of a third subset of social VR applications – one step beyond sandboxes like AltspaceVR that focus on sharing content, Spaces is a polished experience built around all aspects of communication. Spaces is sophisticated and modern, and seems to pay quite a lot of attention to conveying authentic interaction. The Oculus Rift headset’s tracking communicate head, arm, and hand gestures to others in the social space reliably and universally. Facebook also invested time in making human-like avatars. Development lead Mike Book stated, “Facebook is about authentic identity, which is fundamentally about humans”, and this ethos is carried through to Space’s characters, who are stylised, but also authentically human and full of emotional range.
Facebook Spaces’ avatars, though stylised, look and feel human in their actions.
What makes Facebook Spaces interesting is the focus on communicating the emotional aspects of conversation. Like many similar applications, avatars’ mouths move in time with microphone output. In addition, the eye positioning of all users is interpreted, creating “eye contact” with others. Given that eye contact is a key form of nonverbal communication, this is a very important development. Spaces also integrates a wide range of emoticons, triggered by movement and by buttons on the Oculus touch controllers. Movement-based emoticons enable some spontaneity in the conversation, but, as Book says, “You have to invoke them. They’re not supposed to be accidental.” The need to deliberately remember to respond in a certain way abstracts emotional communication. Nevertheless, interaction-focused social spaces in VR are making big steps forward to providing authentic human communication in the space.
BigScreen VRhas an interesting approach. Here, the social element largely revolves around sharing 2D content within VR. Users can share their work, games or entertainment content by allowing others to view their PC screen. Lip sync and inferred gaze tracking adds to the interactivity or the cartoony avatars. According to CEO Darshan Shankar, engagement levels have been impressive, and to show their commitment to this new way of collaborating the company holds its meeting in VR.
Most VR platforms can be divided into these three subsets – sharing experiences, gaming, or authentically communicating. In the fledgling VR industry, developers largely haven’t yet looked to tackle more than two of these at a time. While sharing experiences and gaming in VR are natural fits that have seen massive growth, authentic communication in VR is still difficult to implement successfully. While almost all platforms support good interactions in speech and movement, emotional expression is still largely based on emoticons that have to be purposefully triggered by users.
At Emteq, we are working to deliver a virtual reality experience that can interpret and respond to a user’s emotional state. Our Faceteq™ technology allows user avatars to react in conjunction with the user’s own facial expressions – essential to truly authentic communication. Our expression recognition solution will integrate to common headsets and capture the wearer’s expressions accurately. We believe this affective computing is the key to authentic VR and AR social interaction, and will open up new avenues in digital social spaces. . If you’re interested in learning more, do get in touch.
