dshankar

disclosure: I'm Darshan, YC alum (W2011) and founder/CEO of Bigscreen.

Oculus Go launch title and also Samsung GearVR support

https://blog.bigscreenvr.com/bigscreen-is-launching-today-on...

Stream your Windows PC --> mobile VR headset using the "Bigscreen Remote Desktop" feature

This WAS true in 2015 but is NOT TRUE today. All the Nvidia Pascal-generation desktop GPUs (2016) run extremely well on laptops. Since 2016, there is no more "mobile class" Nvidia GPU designation.

The "VR Ready" laptops are popular, and they have a 1050, 1060, 1070, and even an Nvidia 1080 GPU. These are very powerful gaming laptops, and some are still in slim form factors like the Razor Blade, and relatively affordable for a laptop ($1400-2000)

We expect to be hiring much more senior management roles in the next 6-12 months as well, an engineering manager and a product manager.

Therefore, it's a very wide range from $50k to $150k in salary, and 0.1% to 2% in equity.

Fullstack: https://jobs.lever.co/bigscreenvr/284548b4-7876-4bb2-97fc-36...

Front-end: https://jobs.lever.co/bigscreenvr/2a268771-b32e-42b0-bc6d-98...

Back-end: https://jobs.lever.co/bigscreenvr/ade2408f-20ee-42d7-bfd8-3f...

Bigscreen is a VR/AR company building an immersive, social computing platform. Think "VR Operating System"

We have over 250,000 users on the Rift & Vive. Our power users spend 20-30 hours each week using the product, and tens of thousands of people use Bigscreen every single weekend, making Bigscreen a "killer app" of VR.

We're a tiny team (3 developers) building one of the most successful VR startups with product-market fit and $3 million in funding from top VCs like Andreessen Horowitz. Previously, I was the founder of a Y Combinator startup (YC W11), and before that I studied EECS at UC Berkeley.

We're hiring experienced senior engineers, designers, and artists that enjoy working remotely. Most roles do not require any prior VR experience.

Our VR app is built in C++ and C# (Unity3D), our backend infra is WebRTC & Node.js, and our VR UI front-end is actually HTML/CSS/Javascript.

  - Frontend developer (HTML/CSS/Javascript)
  - Fullstack developer (Javascript)
  - Backend developer (Node.js, Firebase)
  - Interaction / UI designer
  - Unity3D developer

[email protected]

You can see your entire desktop on floating virtual screens, which enables you to use your any desktop app (including but not limited to your web browser).

Bigscreen is instead about the other 99% content that's completely 2D. I wrote a blog post[1] about our founding mission and one example in there is Microsoft Word. Even in VR/AR, the words won't be flying around you in 3D space. Movies and videogames won't disappear and be replaced by 360 and VR games anytime soon.

The question that Bigscreen is tackling is instead: how can VR/AR improve our 2D computing experience?

[1]: https://blog.bigscreenvr.com/3-million-financing-round-led-b...

(that was nearly 10 years ago!)

There is foveated rendering: a rendering optimization technique where you render at higher resolutions where the eye is looking at due to higher visual acuity in a small ~5-degree circle thanks to a large concentration of cones in the fovea of the eye.

This has nothing to do with the actual pixel density of HMDs. Physical pixel density remains an issue, and foveated rendering does not solve that.

edit: Perhaps I misunderstood, are you talking about retinal laser projected displays and concentrating the beam on the fovea?

I've played EVE:Valkyrie for a few hours in the Rift, and the cockpit-based UI is extremely comfortable.

Wires are suboptimal but tracked wires (just like the headset is tracked. i.e. you'll see the wire in VR) should alleviate this problem until wireless technologies mature.

Mobile VR will provide room-scale tracking without wires in 2016. Watch this space.

Not sure where you'd get the idea that Oculus isn't working on non-sexy problems, considering how many people Oculus has working on controls (Oculus Touch), motion sickness, and yes eye tracking too. Obviously Oculus is working on "head tracking" - that's been around since 2012.

Either way, you are correct: waiting to hear about the Vive is a good idea. VR in general (Vive, Rift, etc.) is very much an early adopter technology for the next couple years.

Minor note: AR is far from maturity. The FoV and resolution pales in comparison to VR. 30-degrees (like looking through a pinhole) versus 110-degrees is a massive difference that's hard to explain. AR and VR are like sister technologies that will one day converge.

AR approaching VR by improving FoV and resolution over the next decade, and VR approaching AR by improving real-world capture & scene reconstruction.

The first consumer VR hardware on the market was the GearVR, made by Samsung AND Oculus.

The second consumer VR hardware on the market is likely to be the Oculus Rift (Q1 Jan-Mar shipping) and the Vive is likely to be the third to market (est. April shipping)

This is nothing like the developer previews from years ago. You should read up on the major differences from the DK1->DK2->CV1. Each was a massive leap forward in capability.

Note: I've been developing VR for 1+ years and own every VR headset.

The Vive has "room-scale" tracking that lets you walk around a large room-sized space, and includes hand controllers that are also tracked in the world.

The Rift should support "room-scale" with more cameras, but is not a main focus/supported use case yet for Oculus. The Oculus Touch is like the Vive's tracked hand controllers.

They are far more similar to each other than most people realize.

It is unlikely to be obsolete in 1 year. The update/release cycle for VR headsets (at least for Oculus) is expected to be somewhere between consoles (6-8 years) and smartphones (1 year).

Pricing will be announced on Jan 6 morning and should help you decide.

Note: I work full-time developing VR software and own every VR headset.

Once you raise venture capital, you have to go big or go home, in the span of a decade. You don't have the "grow slow and stay private" option after raising a Series A.

That being said, this is just the current, common state in VC-backed companies. With the weak IPO market and hostile public environment that forces short-term quarterly thinking, we may see alternatives like formalized secondary markets. Perhaps companies like Uber will be able to avoid going public and still provide liquidity options for their early investors & employees.