When Bigscreen founder Darshan Shankar advised us he was bringing the sequel to his Past SteamVR headset to GDC 2025, I booked a flight from New York to San Francisco and again with lower than 24-hour turnaround.
The explanation I made the journey is as a result of the newest design features a new characteristic absent within the authentic which made it exceptionally onerous for me to completely overview. Particularly, the brand new Bigscreen Past 2 provides impartial adjustment of lens placement instantly in entrance of every eye.
Bigscreen Past 2 Has Clearer, Wider, Adjustable Lenses And Optionally available Eye Monitoring
Bigscreen Past 2 begins transport subsequent month with considerably upgraded & adjustable lenses, and Past 2e is coming in Could with eye monitoring too.
“Impartial monocular IPD was made to your eyes Ian,” Shankar wrote over e mail. “It’s not a standard want, however we remembered your need for it.”
After criss-crossing america to check the brand new {hardware}, and after speaking to Shankar for a pair hours, I can write the next sentence about Bigscreen Past 2:
I’ve by no means seen something prefer it.
Video by Don Hopper
Bigscreen’s elegant resolution to lens placement includes the usage of what they name an IPD Device for manually adjusting every lens place. Apple’s $3500 headset robotically strikes every lens into individualized placement in entrance of every pupil, however Bigscreen’s resolution is cheaper and lighter.
The light-weight resolution in Past 2, in the meantime, additionally makes the headset shareable with others with a fast change that additionally ensures unintended changes do not happen when dealing with the machine, as a result of there isn’t any button or wheel to hit as is current on another headsets.
And actually, that is simply cool.
That is what real innovation in VR {hardware} appears to be like like. The tiny hex device slips inside a small gap on both facet of the Past 2’s outer shell, and then you definitely simply twist. I requested Shankar to indicate me the place the holes on my headset have been. He handed off the device to me as I screwed every show into place.
Sure, that is bizarre to put in writing. Sure, it is bizarre to expertise. It is also wildly cool.
I think about that is how Robocop feels throughout a tuneup.
Carrying Bigscreen Past 2 for the primary time and adjusting the gap of every lens.
Bigscreen Past 2: Higher Optics For Enthusiastic VR Use
Bigscreen Past 2’s design truly sheds weight in comparison with the primary model, which was already the world’s lightest totally featured VR headset, albeit one which depends on exterior compute, energy, and monitoring for all of its performance.
Whereas Meta, Apple and even Google steer towards concepts like combined actuality and spatial computing counting on passthrough views, Bigscreen Past 2 doubles down on the core premise of its personal predecessor.
Digital actuality takes folks to locations they wish to go and, in terms of weight in your face for a transportation machine, “each gram issues.” I went to an incredible place instantly with Past 2 in one among Bigscreen’s many film theaters.
“I feel it is simply actually priceless to ship an unimaginable theater in your house for <$2k. That is lengthy been the main target, and continues to be what we chip away at,” Shankar wrote to me.
I noticed fewer distracting inside reflections and, general, the realm of readability is big. Bigscreen claims “complete edge-to-edge readability”, and the lenses did appear very clear to the perimeters. The most important distraction for me was some sort of monitoring jitter I normally affiliate with SteamVR base stations. This was a pre-production unit I wore, the bottom stations weren’t in one of the best place and there have been loads of reflective surfaces within the space that might have triggered points. Nonetheless, it was a minor distraction throughout a brief demo, and we’ll must see how a transport headset holds up over many hours of damage to make a overview suggestion.
The extra essential factor to convey is to these of you who’re simply studying about Bigscreen for the primary time. This machine is constructed by real VR fans constructing VR headsets for individuals who wish to spend hours at unimaginable locations. For many who have not skilled VR but, sure, there is a full theater-sized display inside that tiny headset, and it might have simply as simply been Half-Life: Alyx I used to be enjoying in there.
Bigscreen says it weighs simply 107 grams, down from 127 grams within the first model. With Past 2, this firm of lower than 40 staff places the critique that VR headsets are heavy up to now. You’d suppose it was an FPV viewer however, no, this actually is a PC-powered VR headset you’ll be able to share with household and associates.
Past 2 is slated to start out transport in April beginning at $1019 with an eye-tracking mannequin to observe for $1219. Bigscreen recommends an RTX 2070 or greater graphics card to drive the headset with a PC.
If you strip down “spatial computer systems” and “combined actuality” to the fundamentals, you may discover a light-weight VR headset like Past driving numerous time for folks visiting locations like VRChat, Resonite, and lengthy journeys in high-end PC simulation titles.
If the Oculus Rift VR headset had shrunk every subsequent era from 2016 to now it might need seemed one thing like a Past 2. You may go get a Quest or Imaginative and prescient Professional and put on the load of the Apple or Meta platforms, fairly actually, upon your forehead.
Or go Past.
