Quest Users Can Now Watch YouTube Together Thanks to ‘Bigscreen’ Update

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.

The post Quest Users Can Now Watch YouTube Together Thanks to ‘Bigscreen’ Update appeared first on Road to VR.

January 11, 2021

Disney World’s Decommissioned 20,000 Leagues Ride Is Brought Back To Life In VR

YouTube channel Defunctland has gone out of their way to digitally recreate the now-defunct 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea ride from Disney World as an immersive 360 degree video that can be enjoyed from inside of a VR headset.

The best and easiest way to watch this would be to open up YouTube VR in a Quest and search for 20,000 Leagues VR — watch this one from Defunctland:

Typically, when a ride at an amusement park is decommissioned, it’s typically lost forever. But now diehard supporters and talented programmers are doing their part to digitally archive experiences using VR so that fans around the world can still experience them.

The original 1954 was a live action Disney production and is an iconic sci-fi adventure film about a sea monster attacking a crew in the Pacific Ocean. It won Academy Awards for both Best Art Direction and Best Special Effects as one of the first-ever feature film to be shot in CinemaScope, which was used to shoot widescreen movies. You can watch it now via Disney+ streaming.

The ride itself was featured at Disney World from the 70s until the mid 90s before it was shut down and removed to make way for others. Notably, Disney doesn’t actually refer to its rides as “rides” but instead “attractions” officially as they are meant to represent entire experiences from the moment you set foot in the park, approach the area of the ride, wait in line, etc. — these are all parts of the “experience” and it’s difficult to recapture that even in a VR headset.

We wrote about how immersive the new Star Wars ride is at Disneyland for this very reason.

Efforts like this from Defunctland to archive attractions and help make sure they live on is amazing to see and hopefully they can continue to do this kind of work with other decommissioned rides like Delta Dreamflight or the originally incarnation of Snow White’s Scary Adventures.

December 11, 2020

Oculus Quest’s YouTube App Gets Hand Tracking

Google’s YouTube app for Oculus Quest now supports controller-free hand tracking.

That means you can browse & watch YouTube’s huge collection of regular and immersive videos with just the headset, no controllers required.

This was already possible via the Oculus Browser, but the native app provides a cleaner experience with better performance.

YouTube VR first launched on Samsung Gear VR, which accessed an earlier version of the Oculus Store, back in early 2018. It got Oculus Go support in late 2018 and was an Oculus Quest launch app in 2019.

The app allows users to view all of YouTube’s standard 2D content, but the main focus is on immersive 360° videos- a big focus for YouTube in recent years.

Because it’s difficult to type in VR, the app provides a voice search function using Google’s best-in-class speech recognition technology, the same used in Google Home smart speakers. Users can view their own subscriptions, history, and playlists including their YouTube Music playlists.

YouTube’s continued support of the Oculus VR platform is in stark contrast to its parent company Google, which shut down its own mobile VR platform recently after ending viewer sales in late 2019. Last week it also announced it was shutting down its online library of user-made 3D assets, Poly.

YouTube VR frequently appears near the top of the Oculus Store’s Most Popular list, likely thanks to having the largest collection of immersive videos of any platform.

March 5, 2020

The Best Media Apps Available On The Oculus Quest

The Oculus Quest is one of the hottest VR headsets on the market right now. While there’s a great selection of games for the Quest, there’s also a bunch of media apps that are perfect for when you want to kick back and watch something in VR.

Here are the best VR media apps available on the Oculus Store for the Quest.

YouTube VR

YouTube VR serves two purposes — you can watch normal YouTube content in a VR environment and you can also watch a plethora of 360 video content available on YouTube as well. While 360 degree video content is technically watchable on a standard YouTube browser or mobile app, VR is definitely the best option, so get on it.

Netflix VR

Netflix is probably the biggest player in the streaming game and they have a nice accompanying VR app for your Oculus Quest. Netflix VR will place you in a small cozy cabin where you can enjoy your regular selection of Netflix content on a virtual TV screen that’s probably bigger than the one you own in real life.

Bigscreen

Bigscreen is all about cinemas and social VR. Upon launching Bigscreen, you’ll be able to join a bunch of different rooms and cinemas types providing both free and paid content. Bigscreen Cinema – a service that offers paid tickets to screenings of popular movies — is one of the newer additions to the app. The movies are often shown in 3D and the selection changes weekly, with occasional special screenings such as the Valentine’s Day Titanic screening.

In addition to the official rooms, you can join rooms hosted by other Bigscreen users, which will be displaying content chosen by the host. Plus, you’re able to host your own rooms for you and your friends to join. Using a Bigscreen desktop app, you can even stream your computer display into those rooms while you hang out – it’s a versatile app, to say the least.

Skybox VR

Skybox VR is like Bigscreen but without the social element. It offers a bunch of different cinemas and environments for you to watch content in. You can load files that are stored locally on your Quest or stream content from your a DLNA server on your own network.

Oculus Venues

Oculus Venues is a Facebook app where you can watch a bunch of different events, from music concerts to sports to stand up comedy and more, as they happen live. The catch is that you have to tune in live — you won’t be able to rewatch any Venues content later. Like Bigscreen, you can watch with people around you in a social VR setting or you can opt to watch solo. We’ve had fun with venues in the past, watching some pretty high profile artists like Billie Eilish perform live. If you download the Venues app, you’ll be able see a schedule of the upcoming streamed events and their broadcast times.

Next VR

Similar to Oculus Venues, NextVR has a bunch of live content that you can watch in VR, as if you’re really there. However, Next VR doesn’t incorporate any social elements and you’ll just be watching solo. That being said, some content is also presented in stereoscopic 3D, which really deepens the level of immersion. One of the biggest pulls of NextVR is their NBA content, with some matches allowing you to sit courtside and watch the action live in 3D!

Quill Theater

Late last year, Quill Theater released on the Oculus Quest, which allows you to view Quill content created on the Rift platform. The Quill creation tool is only available on Rift, not Quest, but allows users to make mini scenes, animations and movies. The creation tool allows creators to use some complex 6DoF animations and transitions between scenes, so there’s some great content to watch on the Quest. Quill Theater will present you with a rotating selection of creations to dive into and is definitely worth checking out if you want to see some awesome community media content that made in VR.

Those are our picks for best media apps available on the Oculus Quest? Are there any other apps you feel we should add to the list? Let us know in the comments.

The post The Best Media Apps Available On The Oculus Quest appeared first on UploadVR.

May 17, 2019

Google’s YouTube VR Confirmed for Oculus Quest Launch

There are only a few days to go until the anticipated launch of standalone head-mounted display (HMD) Oculus Quest. In the runup, it’s been revealed that Google’s YouTube VR app will support the device from day one.

Oculus Quest Lifestyle 5

With Oculus hoping to entice new consumers into virtual reality (VR) with Oculus Quest, having a familiar app like YouTube should only help to make the headset more appealing to a wider audience thanks to the growing amount of immersive content uploaded to the platform.

“We want to bring the YouTube VR app to as many people with a VR headset as possible. With more than 1 million VR videos and experiences on YouTube, we want to make sure all new Oculus Quest users and VR fans are able to able to access the diverse library of immersive content on YouTube,” says YouTube VR Product Lead Kurt Wilms on Oculus Blog.

You don’t need a dedicated app to watch YouTube on Oculus Quest as you can simply head to the website via the Oculus Browser. But just like the other versions for Oculus Go, PlayStation VR, Google Daydream, HTC Vive, and Oculus Rift, YouTube VR makes accessing the sites vast amount of content that little bit easier and quicker, especially when looking for 180 or 360-degree video content.

YouTube VR image

“We hope people get excited about all of the incredible content being created on YouTube every day! There’s a ton of amazing videos just waiting to be discovered. We hope that Oculus users can see and experience something totally unique that they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise,” Wilms adds.

The addition of YouTube VR adds to the burgeoning lineup of content for Oculus Quest, from Funktronic Labs announcing musical gardening adventure Fujii, to Polyarc revealing that not only would Moss be a launch day title but the headset would get a new content update first. There are in fact well over 50 videogames and apps coming to the HMD for launch day next Tuesday, 21st May, which should keep most new owners happy for a while.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of Oculus Quest, reporting back with the latest content updates.

May 16, 2019

YouTube VR App Confirmed For Oculus Quest

The Oculus Quest standalone VR headset is getting the official YouTube VR app, Facebook and Google confirmed today.

YouTube VR will join Job Simulator and Tilt Brush in the Quest launch lineup from Google. Vacation Simulator — Google’s newest VR app from its VR development studio Owlchemy Labs — should launch late this year on Quest.

Google’s VR Apps

You can also access YouTube through the Oculus Browser. A dedicated VR app, though, should make it easier for some folks to find and use the video service. YouTube supports 360-degree and 180-degree videos alongside traditional 2D content. The app is already available on Daydream, HTC Vive, PSVR, Gear VR, Oculus Go and Oculus Rift.

YouTube VR is a major addition to the Oculus Quest platform and opens up a large amount of content to explore. Google and others have made great strides over the last few years optimizing the streaming experience for immersive content. Still, you’ll want to secure the fastest Internet connection you can, though, as streaming low resolution immersive content over slow connections can result in some bad experiences.

We’re excited to test out all of Google’s VR apps on Oculus Quest. The headset is running on a mobile chipset that’s underpowered compared with those running PC-based headsets and that’s kept some top apps off of Facebook’s standalone system. Google’s art creation app Tilt Brush is perhaps the most exciting addition to the platform’s launch as it fills a creative void left by the absence of Facebook’s apps Medium and Quill on the standalone VR system.

Tagged with: Oculus Quest, YouTube VR

The post YouTube VR App Confirmed For Oculus Quest appeared first on UploadVR.

May 16, 2019

YouTube VR app bringing over one million experiences to Oculus Quest at launch

YouTube has announced that the company's VR application will be a part of the Quest launch, which goes down at the end of May. It will be delivering and over one million videos, including Emmy-award winning content.

The post YouTube VR app bringing over one million experiences to Oculus Quest at launch appeared first on Digital Trends.

November 28, 2018

The Best Apps and Games to Download for Oculus Go

All the Black Friday hijinks has finally ended for 2018, and with the mad sales dash now over it’s time to enjoy some of those nicely discounted items. One of the good deals this year was for standalone headset Oculus Go, which was the first time the device had been reduced since launch in May. If you happened to pick one up and need a helping hand in the right direction of decent content, or already owned one and just want to expand your library then read on.

What VRFocus is looking at is purely the best content, whether that’s apps for watching movies and TV, playing videogames or simply going online in VR. This is all about showcasing what Oculus Go can do and the reason for buying it in the first place.

Oculus Go Apps

YouTube VR

One of the best ways to see plenty content, the app gives Oculus Go access to the video platform’s massive library of immersive, 3D 360° and VR180° experience, allowing viewers to watch the videos as intended.

Price: Free

Netflix

Watch all of the streaming services TV shows, movies and original content anywhere you like, whenever you like. All on one massive screen, binge-watch to your heart’s content.

Price: Subscription based

Facebook 360

Similar to YouTube VR, the Facebook 360 app gives you access to social media sites 360 videos, 360 photos, Live 360 and Facebook Shows, all in one convenient location.

Price: Free

Gala 360 – See the World

With over 300 tours (most of which are free), Gala 360 is a great app to showcase the quality of the 6k resolution images. Drop viewers in exotic locations to see how awe-inspiring VR can be.

Price: Free (premium content costs $3.99 USD)

AltspaceVR

One of several apps that showcase the social qualities of VR, AltspaceVR allows you to hang out with friends, make new ones, play videogames together and even attend live events with comedians, DJ’s and more.

Price: Free

Oculus Go Games

Virtual Virtual Reality

Virtual Virtual Reality a somewhat bizarre comedy adventure about VR and AI. Use virtual VR headsets to explore over 50 unique virtual virtual realities, uncovering the story as you go.

Price: £7.99 GBP

Catan VR

Experiment 7 has brought this classic board game to VR, offering four-player tournaments online as well as a single-player to learn the ropes. Players take the role of settlers who need to establish colonies on the islands of Catan, acquiring resources to build infrastructure and roads whilst engaging in trade with other players, all with aim of growing large enough to get the ten victory points needed to win.

Price: £7.99

Wands

A cross-platform multiplayer experience, Wands puts you in the shoes of an apprentice magician who must do battle in one-on-one matches against other wizards. With a small selection of spells to begin with, as you level up and become stronger you’ll gain access to better spells offering a wider choice of tactical opportunities.

Price: £7.99

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

An oldie but a goldie, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes by Steel Crate Games was one of the earliest examples of local social VR multiplayer, highlighting the fact that VR doesn’t have to be a solitary experience. The VR player has to diffuse a bomb, unfortunately, they have no idea how to as each bomb is made up of different modules that have to be solved individually. To do this all the non-VR players have a bomb manual and must guide the person in VR to the correct solution.

Price: £7.99

République VR

One of the bigger adventures on this list, République VR is another Oculus Go launch day title. It’s stealth-action videogame that explores the perils of government surveillance in the internet age. With over 10 hours of gameplay, République VR has players controlling the fortunes of Hope, a woman trapped inside a mysterious totalitarian state who must hack her way to freedom.

Price: £7.99

Rush

One for the adrenaline junkies out there. Proximity jump off mountains in a wingsuit and race AI competitors to the bottom, just watch out for cliffs, trees, the ground, basically, everything in this adrenaline-fuelled ride.

Price: £5.99

End Space

Designed as a pure space combat title, End Space puts players in the pilot seat of the Minos Starfighter that can track targets with their gaze and blast them with Pulse Lasers, or lock on and pound them into space dust with Meteor Missiles. Like any good shooter, players can unlock new weapons and upgrades as they progress through the ranks by taking on increasingly daring missions.

Price: £5.99

November 13, 2018

YouTube VR Brings its Wealth of Content to Oculus Go

A couple of months ago Oculus made the long-awaited announcement that YouTube VR would finally be coming to its standalone headset, Oculus Go. That time has now come, with Oculus Go owners now able to download the app for free via Oculus Store.

Youtube_HEader

The app gives Oculus Go access to the video platform’s massive library of immersive, 3D 360° and VR180° content, allowing viewers to watch the videos as intended – rather than on a flat screen controlling the viewpoint with a mouse.

Oculus Go is now the latest headset to feature YouTube VR, with Google’s own Daydream View the very first to include support. HTC Vive acquired the app last year, with customers able to download it via Steam, and so did PlayStation VR. It was only Oculus that was left out.

With other apps looking to fill that gap Google likely didn’t want to lose its dominance in the video market, so it brought YouTube to Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR almost at the same time this summer, via Steam and Oculus Store respectively.

Oculus Go GDC Promo 03

There are more than 800,000 experiences available through the app, and if you already have a YouTube account, you can sign into the app and view your subscriptions, playlists, watch history, and more. Plus, to make searching the myriad of content easier – without having to type on a virtual keyboard – the app includes a voice search function.

The addition to Oculus Go only helps to support main functionality, which Oculus has previously mentioned is watching entertainment. CTO John Carmack discussed during Oculus Connect 5 (OC5) that Oculus Go users tended to veer towards apps like Netflix and Hulu, while Oculus Rift owners were gamers predominantly.

As the Oculus Go content lineup increases, VRFocus will report back with the latest additions.

November 12, 2018

YouTube VR Is Finally Available on Oculus Go

Google’s YouTube has now made their app available on Facebook’s Oculus Go standalone headset. The app was previously available on Samsung Gear VR, which uses the same store as Oculus Go, but Go was blacklisted until today.

YouTube VR launched on Gear VR back in July, but no word was given on Go support. At Oculus Connect 5 in late September, Oculus Product Manager Sean Liu finally announced that YouTube VR was coming to Go.