VR social productivity app Bigscreen raises $3M with Andreessen Horowitz

After wasting money on 2 other VR desktop apps, I was shocked that Bigscreen was free and 10x better than the other ones.<p>Hope they can put the investment to good use. I&#x27;m definitely not opposed to paying them when the final version is released.

I have never used Bigscreen (just had access to a Rift for a couple weeks) but I&#x27;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&#x27;ve much rather plugged in with them into this beautiful virtual casino then dealt with shuffling cards at home in real life. Can&#x27;t wait to be able to get the hands on my own VR device to see everything that Bigscreen has to offer!

I can&#x27;t wait for VR resolution to increase so things like this work really well.<p>From my experience using the Oculus dev kit 2 there was too much of a &quot;screen door&quot; effect and it was hard to read text on a virtual monitor vs reading text on a real life monitor. It wasn&#x27;t practical to use a virtual monitor to say, write code or surf the web.<p>But resolution will only get better! At that point will things get fun and I can see people eschewing monitors for VR &quot;monitors&quot;.

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.<p>Here is a demo video: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;-CFOGDBFKrk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;-CFOGDBFKrk</a>

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

I&#x27;ve used bigscreen before, and while it might be hard to read small text, it is still a really nice app. I don&#x27;t use the &quot;multiplayer&quot; 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.

In a virtual environment wouldn&#x27;t you want a program like Blender to have a 3D interface?<p>And are couches and living room environments a skeumorphobic ornament to help the transition to VR?

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

Interesting to see a VR company working fully remote

I haven&#x27;t been able to type in the other screen viewer app I got on the rift. Does BigScreen offer that?

I hope they&#x27;re working on the street protocol for the metaverse!