Bigscreen released a holiday update just before Christmas bringing new environments and features. Plus, the developers are seeing strong statistics and retention on Quest 2.
The biggest part of the update is the new drive-in theater environment, which the developers said was the #1 most requested feature from users.
In addition to the drive-in, the app has also been redesigned over the last few months and now features a brand new user interface. The developers say that the new UI should make it easier to discover new rooms and content, which is convenient as there’s also 60 new TV channels being added into Bigscreen in this update. The channels “including major crime-drama series such as Narcos and hilarious game shows like Wipeout.”
A new TV category called “To Infinity and Beyond” is also being added to Bigscreen for livestreams and re-runs of rocket launches. According to the developers, SpaceX launches are some of the largest social events in Bigscreen and VR in general, with thousands of people all watching at once.
The developers also noted that the Quest 2 launch has been massive for Bigscreen and has meant that the team had to upgrade their servers. According to the developers, “core metrics are up 3-5x since October” and people are spending more time in the app than ever. “The average session is nearly an hour, and power users spend 20-30 hours every week in Bigscreen. Quest has become the most popular headset in Bigscreen’s userbase, followed by the Oculus Rift S, Valve Index, and HTC Vive.”
Thanks to the server upgrade, lobbies now support 12 people (up from 8) and the plan is for room size limits to increase up to 25 or even 50 people sometime next year.
With this update, Bigscreen is no longer supported on Oculus Go, as Facebook stopped accepting app updates for that headset as of December 4. The Oculus Go Bigscreen servers will be shut down “in the coming weeks.”
Next year, Bigscreen plans to ship several features, including “a friends system, new avatars, new environment, major improvements to our video streaming, a new ultra-low latency Remote Desktop feature and more.” PlayStation VR and Mac app support are both also “on the roadmap” but without a strict timeline.
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