How to socialize with your friends in VR with Bigscreen
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In an era of social distancing, apps like Bigscreen present an amazing opportunity to stay close to the ones we love but can’t be with, whether they’re across town or across the country. Bigscreen transforms your living room into a social gathering space, all without having the physically have people over to your home. Bigscreen offers plenty of ways to watch your favorite shows and movies through its official Bigscreen TV andBigscreen Cinema, but what if you just wanted to hang out, or watch movies you already own? We outline the steps to get started, no matter if you own a PC VR headset, Oculus Quest, Oculus Go, GearVR, or any other VR device that Bigscreen supports.
Products used in this guide
When you just want to hang out and chat
Watching movies and all that is fun, but what if you just want to have a little get-together with friends or family and catch up? Hanging out in Bigscreen gives meetings a physical quality that can’t be achieved through a Zoom or Facetime call. While you won’t see the other person’s real face, seeing them sit on a couch or next to you in front of a virtual firepit, expressing their emotions with hands and other virtual body language is incredibly convincing.
You can host your own hangout room with any supported headset, and it takes just a few steps to get going.
Check out a movie premiere or watch live TV
One of Bigscreen’s most amazing features is the ability to watch TV programs or movies in the company of others. While going to a physical movie theater can be expensive and time-consuming, it takes just a few seconds to put your VR headset on and, at most, only a few dollars to catch a movie in Bigscreen Cinema. Here’s how to watch with friends or complete strangers.
Hosting your own room to watch sports, TV, or other movies with friends with a PC-based VR headset
Watching movies in the company of strangers faithfully recreates the movie theater-going experience, but sometimes it’s just more fun to watch something in the company of friends or family. Whether you’re enjoying the latest release or recreating Mystery Science Theater 3000 with your best buds, Bigscreen makes it easy to host your own room and play anything from the comfort of your computer. For best performance, we recommend using a PC-based VR headset like an Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index, or a Windows Mixed Reality headset.
Now to invite your friends!
Hosting your own room to watch sports, TV, movies, or play desktop games with friends on an Oculus Quest
For this step, the host of the room will need their own Windows-based PC in order to play their own media for others to enjoy. A standalone headset like an Oculus Quest will work just fine for this process, but the wireless connection between your wireless headset and your PC will reduce the overall quality of the stream for others in the room.
If you’re using an Oculus Quest, you’ll need to go through a few additional steps. We’ll begin on your laptop or desktop PC.
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Now you can put the Oculus Quest on your head.
And there you have it. Everything you’ll need to start hanging out with your friends and family, and an amazing way to connect to those who are too far away for regular visits. If you’re really creative, you could easily throw together a LAN party with friends or have marathon movie-watching sessions late at night.
Crystal clear VR
The Oculus Rift S isn’t just super simple to setup, it’s also got one of the sharpest displays on the market. That’s perfect since it’s powered by your powerful gaming PC!
The easiest way to get into VR
The Oculus Quest might be the best thing that ever happened to VR. Everything just works, and you don’t need anything extra to enjoy the best of VR.
Bigscreen is one of the best ways to socialize with friends. Whether it’s watching a movie or TV show, or just hanging out, Bigscreen is a powerful tool for bringing loved ones close.
Nick started with DOS and NES and uses those fond memories of floppy disks and cartridges to fuel his opinions on modern tech. Whether it’s VR, smart home gadgets, or something else that beeps and boops, he’s been writing about it since 2011. Reach him on Twitter or Instagram @Gwanatu
