Bigscreen VR is much more than what it seems. On first glance in your app store, you will think this app is meant for viewing videos and live-streamed shows. It does do that, and it does it very well. That’s not its only great feature though, as this has turned into one of the premier ways to socialize inside of virtual reality. Bigscreen VR might not be the most popular app inside of your headset, but you will soon learn why this may be the most resourceful app inside of your headset.
Bigscreen is not exclusive to any headset either. You can run it on your HTC Vive and Vive Pro, your new Oculus Rift S, the standalone Oculus Quest, and even the newest Valve Index. This app runs beautifully on any major VR headset, and it runs even better if you have some friends inside of VR to hang out with. In this latest edition of the updates as well, you can access social media through your app.
You will be able to choose from over 20 different environments to hang out in, invite people, make your party open to the public, and even design different aspects of your room. There are plenty of fantastic features in this game, and below, we will be listing the ones we will be talking about.
Movies and TV shows
Live sports
Designing your room
Streaming your desktop to your headset
Customizing your avatar
Although this app is still in beta and has some work to be done to it, we believe if you spend time inside of this application, the fun it will bring will be unmatched. The ability to create, watch a full series of TV on the big screen, and hang out with friends in a theatrical setting is unmatched inside of virtual reality right now. The ability to be social is going to launch VR forward, and Bigscreen knows that.
Movies and TV Shows
The shows that make it to the Bigscreen platform are no joke. The lineup of any film classics, TV shows, and movies are always box office. You don’t need any other app to suffice all audiences. Through the PC side of the app, you can show many live events are well. There aren’t any shows or entertainment parts of the world you can’t get inside of this app.
From Comedy Central’s official channel to accessing all of the streams inside of Twitch, there will never be a dull moment. There are always at least 4 different movies going on in the app, and that content continues throughout the future of the app. Each one of the shows inside of the app have a unique environment as well. If you are daring enough, you can tune into a buddies stream and watch one of those movies as well.
Live Sports
Watching sports is one of the best things you can do with a TV, regardless of the location or setting. Inside of VR? Let’s watch some basketball. At a crowded bar? Let’s watch Monday Night Football. Sports are a way to bring fans from different backgrounds and life experiences together for one common goal. Winning. The experience of meeting someone new who wants the same thing as you can be a social experience you won’t soon forget.
Bigscreen allows you to see upcoming games and streams, as well as support for different league apps on the app. For example, right now you can see the NFL channel for free and watch their channel. On Sundays, you can watch certain games inside that app. When NBA season rolls around, you can watch those games as well. We didn’t forget about esports, as that has its section for streams and live events.
Designing Your Room
What is the point of having your own space in VR if you can’t customize it? The Oculus homeroom allows you to customize enough to make you feel like an interior designer that is choosing the pictures on the wall. Bigscreen doesn’t allow you to customize the exact aspects of your room, but they do allow you to choose from plenty of options to spend your virtual time. From campfires to beautiful balconies, there is no shortage of rooms.
Once you pick your room and environment, now is the time to start inviting your friends. To just look at your room key, that will be found on the right side of your view. To make your room public and open to others, you can change your name and purpose of the room. This will show up on the right side of “environments” for everybody else. Movie nights just got a whole lot easier for big groups of people. You can also tag your stream as NSFW, as it is a smart effective way to make sure people know what they will be seeing in your room.
Streaming Your Desktop To Your Headset
If you are tired or bored of the options you have inside of the app, getting access to your desktop inside of Bigscreen is as easy as ever. Regardless of the headset you have, the directions are fairly simple. Whether you want to stream in the Valve Index or the Oculus Go, the setup is the same and can be found below.
Inside of the Steam Store, download the Bigscreen Desktop app.
From there, you will be asked for a stream key
Go inside of your headset and launch Bigscreen VR
Go to the bottom left and press on “desktop mode”
Type the key from your headset onto your computer
From there, you will be able to access your desktop inside of virtual reality. This means you can search, view, and play any content curated from the internet. This is essentially the same as your desktop, but you have a headset in front of your eyes.
Customizing Your Avatar
Customizing your avatar might be the most frustrating part of this app. You want to be well-represented in this game, just like any other game, and Bigscreen doesn’t allow that to fully happen. You can customize every part of your face, but it is a click-through menu. That means to go to the next option, you simply click on it. To go back one option, you have to cycle through all of the options. For each feature that you can customize, there are only about six different options to go through, and each one is more outlandish than the last.
Not many of the options are something that resembles many real humans, so finding your exact match may be a struggle for some time. It likely won’t look exactly like you in the virtual world, but the simplicity will be enough to keep you entertained for the time being. Your mouth moves when you speak so that’s some added fun as well.
Overall
This is an app that we highly recommend to any virtual reality user. Everyone consumes content every day, but not all of it is usually in the same place. Now with Bigscreen VR and their biggest and best updates out to the public, this app allows you to consume all of your content in one place, in one app, all inside of your virtual reality headset. Don’t go another day without this free app as you can find it in any virtual app store.
