
VR social productivity app Bigscreen raises $3M with Andreessen Horowitz - febin
https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/24/vr-social-productivity-app-bigscreen-raises-3m-in-round-led-by-andreessen-horowitz/
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jacquesc
After wasting money on 2 other VR desktop apps, I was shocked that Bigscreen
was free and 10x better than the other ones.

Hope they can put the investment to good use. I'm definitely not opposed to
paying them when the final version is released.

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dshankar
Bigscreen founder here. Thanks for the kind words! If you have any bugs or
feature requests, please let me know! darshan@bigscreenvr.com

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ChicagoBoy11
I have never used Bigscreen (just had access to a Rift for a couple weeks) but
I'm not surprised by this investment. When I played around with it, despite
the several gaming options available, the most compelling experience I had in
VR was just a pretty mundane casino game where I played poker. That above all
else sold me on the potential of VR. As long as people think about VR just as
immersive gaming, the potential is going to be limited. But what the casino VR
experience taught me was that even something completely mundane like playing a
game of cards could be far more immersive and more entertaining in a VR
setting; if I had 5 friends over at home with me, I would've much rather
plugged in with them into this beautiful virtual casino then dealt with
shuffling cards at home in real life. Can't wait to be able to get the hands
on my own VR device to see everything that Bigscreen has to offer!

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pyromine
To be honest that kind of scares me. What will happen when VR is commonplace
and we are continually using it to escape reality.

Not to say we don't do that already, but the gradual degradation of reality is
truly quite interesting.

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return0
Hopefully the goggles will become comfortable and we ll be able to take them
off easily. We ll get used to the escape. It will become as commonplace and
unremarkable as headphones

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netinstructions
I can't wait for VR resolution to increase so things like this work really
well.

From my experience using the Oculus dev kit 2 there was too much of a "screen
door" effect and it was hard to read text on a virtual monitor vs reading text
on a real life monitor. It wasn't practical to use a virtual monitor to say,
write code or surf the web.

But resolution will only get better! At that point will things get fun and I
can see people eschewing monitors for VR "monitors".

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AgentME
As someone who has used both devkits of the Oculus and now owns a consumer-
version Vive, I have to say the jump in resolution after the Oculus devkit 2
was pretty major. The resolution isn't great for reading anything other than
big text and you can still make out the pixels when you look for them, but I'd
no longer describe the resolution as having the "screen door effect" that was
so major in the Oculus devkits.

I've enjoyed using Bigscreen for watching videos and movies, checking a couple
headlines, and for vr-chatting with friends. I hope the headset's resolution
is better in the future so that I can do more activities while in it, but as
it is is pretty cool.

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stan1
You can absolutely read small text if you supersample at 1.5-2.0x.

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venti
This reminded me of a project by Sun Microsystems called Project Wonderland.
They created a virtual world in which you could attend meetings and look at
slides together with other avatars – although this was not in VR.

Here is a demo video:
[https://youtu.be/-CFOGDBFKrk](https://youtu.be/-CFOGDBFKrk)

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return0
They re doing what secondlife should have done long ago. I wonder if they have
a platform for games.

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theaustinseven
I've used bigscreen before, and while it might be hard to read small text, it
is still a really nice app. I don't use the "multiplayer" feature, but what is
really nice is to switch up my work environment at home from time to time. It
also eliminates a lot of distractions.

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dshankar
I'd love to learn more about how you're using Bigscreen (and how we can make
it better for you). Could you email me? darshan@bigscreenvr.com

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pazimzadeh
In a virtual environment wouldn't you want a program like Blender to have a 3D
interface?

And are couches and living room environments a skeumorphobic ornament to help
the transition to VR?

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lebek
A lot of us are working on 3D interfaces for design tools, but the difficult
part seems to be making it bearable for longer sessions (hours). Some
examples:

Medium [https://www.oculus.com/medium/](https://www.oculus.com/medium/)

Tilt Brush [https://www.tiltbrush.com/](https://www.tiltbrush.com/)

Quill
[https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/1118609381580656/](https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/1118609381580656/)

MARUI [https://www.marui-plugin.com/](https://www.marui-plugin.com/)

Simplex
[http://www.gradientspace.com/simplexvr/](http://www.gradientspace.com/simplexvr/)

Gravity Sketch
[https://www.gravitysketch.com/](https://www.gravitysketch.com/)

Unity EditorVR [https://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/12/15/editorvr-
experimental-b...](https://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/12/15/editorvr-experimental-
build-available-today/)

Unreal Engine VR Editor
[https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Editor/VR/](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Editor/VR/)

Modbox
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/414120/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/414120/)

Mindshow [http://mindshow.com/](http://mindshow.com/)

and my own tool Sketchbox [http://sketchboxvr.com](http://sketchboxvr.com)

So far it seems like the traditional CAD players (Autodesk, Dassault, Adobe)
are focused on using VR for visualization, rather than creation.

~~~
sjg007
Man this will be the matrix or definitely Caprica.

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callumprentice
Does Bigscreen let you view modern web content in VR? If so, what are they
using under the hood to do that?

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dshankar
Bigscreen lets you view _any_ content in VR that you can currently view on
your computer, not just web content.

You can see your entire desktop on floating virtual screens, which enables you
to use your any desktop app (including but not limited to your web browser).

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pmcpinto
Interesting to see a VR company working fully remote

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trapperkeeper79
I haven't been able to type in the other screen viewer app I got on the rift.
Does BigScreen offer that?

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gfody
I hope they're working on the street protocol for the metaverse!

