SteamVR

VR Veteran Studio Behind ‘Bigscreen’ Unveils Thin & Light PC VR Headset ‘Beyond’

February 13, 2023 From roadtovr

The team behind social VR viewing app Bigscreen today unveiled a thin and light PC VR headset that not only promises a few intriguing enthusiast-grade specs, but also a custom-made fit based on a 3D scan of your face. In short, it’s a big first for the VR veterans, who are responsible for one of the most beloved VR content viewing platforms.

Called Bigscreen Beyond, the $999 headset presents an interesting set of features which are squarely aimed at PC VR enthusiasts: dual OLED microdisplays offering 2,560 × 2,560 per-eye resolution, pancake optics, and 6DOF SteamVR tracking support.

The company is billing the tethered PC VR headset as the smallest and lightest of its kind, weighing in at just 127 grams and measuring less than 1-inch at its thinnest point.

Bigscreen Beyond starts pre-orders today, priced at $999. Ostenibly, Beyond is targeting PC VR users who likely already in the SteamVR ecosystem but want something thinner and lighter than the last generation of headsets, such as Valve Index. Notably, the headset doesn’t include the requiste SteamVR tracking base stations or SteamVR-compatible controllers like the Valve Index controller or HTC Vive wand—you’ll have to purchase those separately.

The reasoning: Bigscreen founder and CEO Darshan Shankar says the VR software studio wanted to build “the VR headset we wanted for ourselves.”

“Today’s leading VR headsets have doubled in weight compared to headsets from 2016. We built Beyond because we felt VR was too heavy, bulky, and uncomfortable,” Shankar says. “We invented new technologies to increase comfort, and developed ultra-high-end components like OLED microdisplays and pancake optics to increase immersion. To deliver the best software experience for watching movies in Bigscreen, we also had to build the best hardware with Bigscreen Beyond.”

Like many forthcoming VR headsets, Beyond is able to slim down thanks to the inclusion of pancake lenses, which Bigscreen says are a three-element optical design composed of glass, plastic polymers, films, and coatings.

Paired with two OLED microdisplays, each with a resolution of 2,560 × 2,560 pixels, Beyond boasts a high fill-factor with its 7.2-μm wide pixels and RGB stripe subpixels, resulting in what the company says eliminates the screen door effect—when the non-illuminated spaces between pixels make it seem like you’re viewing VR content through a screen door.

Resolution alone doesn’t tell the whole story, although for reference Valve Index is 1,440 × 1,600 per-eye, Meta Quest Pro is 1,920 × 1,800 pixels per-eye, and Pico 4 is 2,160 × 2,160 pixels per-eye.

Another one of Beyond’s big enthusiast-grade features is owed to Bigscreen’s ability to customize the fit of the headset to each user, which will be done by doing a one-time scan of the user’s face using an iPhone XR or more recent Apple mobile device. The dedicated Bigscreen scanning app is said to measure the shape of the user’s face and the position of their eyes, which allows the company to form a facial interface a unique to the individual and determine interpupillar distance.

The hand-washable facial interface is said to provide “even weight distribution, zero light leakage, and aligns the eyes and optics correctly.” Additionally, glasses wearers will have to spring for custom prescription lenses that magnetically fit into Beyond, as glasses do not fit inside the small form factor.

Although it ships with a soft strap, users can also spring for the optional audiostrap. We haven’t confirmed pricing for that yet, however we’ll update once we do.

Granted, some things we’d consider ‘nex-gen’ are notably missing from Beyond, such as eye-tracking, face-tracking, optical 6DOF tracking, and the ability to use it wirelessly. As the first VR headset from a long-time VR veteran though, Beyond does check a lot of boxes for users such as simulator fans, and anyone looking for a better long-term VR media viewer.

Bigscren Beyond is slate to ship in waves based on region. Preorders, which are fully cancellable and refundable up until shipping, are set to ship in the United States sometime in Q3 2023.

Second wave shipments will begin in Q4 2023 in Canada and Europe including the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Netherlands, Italy, and Belgium. A third wave of will come sometime in late 2023, including Japan, Australia, New Zealand. The company says Beyond will be available in more countries and regions in 2024.

Check out the spec sheet below:

Bigscreen Beyond Specs

Display Resolution	5120 x 2560 pixels (2560 x 2560 per eye) cloed at max 90Hz
Field Of View (FOV)	93° HFOV x 90° VFOV
Pixels Per Degree (PPD)	28°
Interpupillary Distance (IPD)	56mm-74mm accommodated (fixed IPD per device, 58mm-72mm)
Optics Type	Custom Pancake Optics
6DOF Tracking	SteamVR Tracking (aka Lighthouse)
Version	V1.0 or V2.0 Base Stations. Not included.
Controllers	SteamVR controllers (ex. Valve Index, HTC Vive). Not included.
Full-Body Tracking	SteamVR trackers (ex. HTC Vive Tracker, Tundra Tracker). Not included.
Audio	Not built-in (USB C port for Audio), or optional Audio Strap
Ports	USB-C accessory port (USB 2.0)
Microphone Input	Stereo microphones
PC Connection	DisplayPort 1.4 (video) and dual USB 3.0 ports (power, data)
Accessory ports	USB-C (USB 2.0 speed)
Cable	5-meter custom fiber optic cable and Link Box
PC Requirements
CPU	Quad Core Intel or AMD
GPU	Nvidia RTX 2070 or AMD RX 5700 XT or newer (DisplayPort 1.4 and DSC required)
Ports	1 x DisplayPort 1.4, 2 x USB 3.0 ports

Hidden SteamVR Feature May be Another Clue to Valve’s Rumored Standalone VR Headset

July 19, 2022 From roadtovr

A recent SteamVR beta release included a hidden feature that allows the user’s playspace boundary to be set up in a passthrough mode which could eventually be used for existing SteamVR headsets or a future headset from Valve.

Users of Quest or Rift S will be familiar with passthrough playspace setup. This when you outline the boundary of your playspace while actually wearing the headset and using its cameras to look at the room around you. The feature significantly streamlines the playspace setup process compared to looking an another display (like a computer monitor) while trying to create your boundary.

Despite having their own on-board cameras, SteamVR headsets like Index and others have yet to adopt this convenience, but that could soon change.

VR YouTuber Brad Lynch recently discovered a hidden playspace setup feature that was contained in a beta release of SteamVR. Unlike the platform’s existing playspace setup feature, this one guides the user through the process while they are actually wearing their headset. Similar to what we see on Quest, the setup procedure has users reach to the ground with their controller to establish the floor height. And where on Quest users trade their playspace boundary with a controller, the hidden SteamVR setup has users ‘push’ the boundary walls away from them to expand their playspace to the correct size.

The feature is still clearly in development and right now doesn’t properly enable a passthrough view, but we can be almost certain it’s meant to be a passthrough playspace setup because the user needs to be able to see the room around them in order to safely create their playspace boundary from within the headset.

It isn’t clear at this point if the new feature is intended to be used with existing PC VR headsets that have cameras on them (like Index or Vive Pro 2), or perhaps even Valve’s rumored standalone headset.

The latter seems plausible considering that passthrough playspace setup is essentially a requirement for any 6DOF standalone VR headset, and that’s because unlike with PC VR, there’s no PC screen to relay setup instructions to the user. It’s possible this could instead be achieved using a companion device like a smartphone, though we haven’t seen any headsets take that approach to date.

Regardless of whether or not there’s a new headset to take advantage of the feature, we’d be happy to see it come to existing headsets, like Index, which have on-board cameras that have gone almost entirely unutilized. Hopefully other native SteamVR headsets will be able to tap into the feature too.

Brad Lynch also found a handful of other interesting changes hiding in the same beta release of SteamVR—check out the full video to see them all.

Unexpected Update Brings New Content to SteamVR Home

May 26, 2022 From roadtovr

Valve released an update to SteamVR this week that unexpectedly added new content to SteamVR Home.

Valve has long been making small but helpful updates to SteamVR, but especially in the last year there hasn’t been a particularly clear signal that the company was putting much work into the platform.

That’s why it was surprising to see that with the public launch of the SteamVR 1.22 update this week, the company added a surprise—a brand new photogrammetry environment for SteamVR Home, its first-party VR social space.

The new environment is a capture of a portion of the village of Fornalutx in Mallorca, which resides in the Western Mediterranean Sea.

New SteamVR Home Environment Screenshots

SteamVR users can download the new environment by subscribing to it in the Steam Workshop. Once downloaded, it will become available as a new place you and friends can visit in SteamVR Home.

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like this slice of new content means that Valve has renewed motivation to work on its VR platform. As explained in the patch notes, the photos were originally captured back in October 2019—shortly after the release of the company’s Index headset. Given what we know about Valve’s unique corporate structure, it seems likely the timing of this release merely coincided with an individual at the company digging up the old photos and processing them as something of a side project.

So, nice to have a cool new scan to explore, but we don’t think it means Valve is suddenly going to be cranking out big new updates for SteamVR.

The company has continued to work on SteamVR, albeit slowly. A handful of updates have landed over the last year or so that have made improvements to the SteamVR dashboard, added new settings for power users, and made the platform play nicer with Quest headsets using Oculus Link.

Granted, still long overdue is a SteamVR native version of core Steam features like friends list, voice chats, a fully functional store and library, achievements, and more. SteamVR for a long time has fallen back to the Steam ‘Big Picture’ interface that’s designed for large displays. Unfortunately in VR that interface runs very clunkily and was clearly designed for a different input modality.

Beyond adding the new SteamVR Home environment, the SteamVR 1.22 update also brought with it a bunch of bug fixes and technical improvements that were previously released in beta versions of the software; you can see the full patch notes here.

SteamVR

Bigscreen Beyond Specs

PC Requirements