Bigscreen announced its thin and light PC VR headset, Bigscreen Beyond, is facing delays in production, which the company says will see shipping dates for initial preorders pushed later into October and November.
Bigscreen CEO Darshan Shankar says in a blogpost that manufacturing bottlenecks have led to slower-than-expected production rates, making for what the company calls “approximately 25% of the target [production] rate” in some bottlenecks than previously projected.
Bigscreen says around 20% of US-based pre-orders initially quoted for a Q3 shipping window will be shipped by next week, with the rest expected to be completed by November. Most of those Q3 pre-orders were made in February, which was the company’s “biggest month of sales.”
“The remaining 80% will take another 2-7 weeks to ship. We aim to complete all Q3 preorder shipments by November 6-November 19,” Bigscreen says, noting it will reach “full capacity” production by November.
Meanwhile, the company says more recent pre-orders given a tentative Q4 shipment date are still on track, which includes both US and international orders. Here’s the proposed schedule moving forward:
Image courtesy Bigscreen
Bigscreen details a number of issues that contributed to the delays, including important calibration machines lost in customs on the way to a China-based parts supplier, and being out of stock of certain IPDs as they await additional headsets and parts to be produced.
“We’re taking this seriously,” Bigscreen CEO Darshan Shankar explains. “Solving these bottlenecks requires significant effort with multiple flights to China and our team in California working until 5AM. To ensure we improve our manufacturing and calibration bottlenecks, I will personally remain on-site at our factories in China for the next month to ensure ramp up goes smoothly. In addition to these new machines, we will begin a second night shift at our factories to improve production. We’ve also doubled the size of our LA factory team in the past 2 months.”
The tiny SteamVR headset sets itself apart from the competition by offering a much lighter and compact design than traditional PC VR headsets. It does this by including high-resolution microOLEDs, pancake lenses, outside-in SteamVR tracking, and a custom facepad made specially for each customer to insure zero light leakage. Check out our review of Bigscreen Beyond to learn more, and hear our full impressions about what has undoubtedly become a pioneer in VR headset design.
Bigscreen Beyond is the most interesting and promising new dedicated PC VR headset to come out in years, and while there’s a lot to like, we’re still waiting on a key piece that will make or break the headset.
Bigscreen Beyond has one goal in mind: make the smallest possible headset with the highest possible image quality.
Generally speaking, this unlikely headset (born from a VR software startup, after all) has ‘pulled it off.’ It’s an incredibly compact VR headset with built-in SteamVR tracking. It feels like a polished, high-end product with a look and feel that’s all its own. The visuals are great, though not without a few compromises. And it delivers something that no other headset to date has: a completely custom facepad that’s specially made for each customer.
I’ll dig more into the visual details soon, but first I need to point out that Bigscreen Beyond missing something important: built-in audio.
While there’s an official deluxe audio strap on the way, as of right now the only way to use Bigscreen Beyond is with your own headphones. In my case that means a pair of wireless gaming headphones connected to my PC. And it also means another thing to put on my head.
For some headsets this would be a notable but not deal-breaking inconvenience, for Bigscreen Beyond, however, it’s amplified because the headset’s custom-fit facepad means absolutely zero light leakage. It wasn’t until I started using Beyond that I realize just how often I use the nose-gap in the bottom of most headsets to get a quick glimpse into the real world, whether that’s to grab controllers, make sure I didn’t miss an important notification on my phone, or even pick up a pair of headphones.
With no nose-gap and no passthrough camera, you are 100% blind to the real world when you put on Beyond. Then you need to feel around to find your headphones. Then you need to feel around for your controllers.
Oops, something messed up on your PC and you need to restart SteamVR? Sure, you can lift the headset to your forehead to deal with it in a pinch, but then you put it back down and realize you got some oil on the lenses from your hair or forehead. So now you need to wipe the lenses… ok, let me put down the controllers, take off the headphones, take off the headset, wipe the lenses, then put on the headset, feel around for my headphones, then feel around for my controllers. Now I want to fix my headstrap… oops the headphones are in the way. Let me take those off for a minute…
All of this and more was the most frustrating part of an otherwise quite good experience when using Beyond. And sure, I could use wireless earbuds or even external speakers. But both have downsides that don’t exist with a built-in audio solution.
Photo by Road to VR
A lack of built-in audio on a VR headset just feels like a huge step back in 2023. It’s a pain in the ass. Full stop.
Until we have the upcoming deluxe audio strap to pair with Beyond, it feels incomplete. We’re patiently waiting to get our hands on the strap—as it will really make-or-break the headset—and plan to update our review when that time comes. Bigscreen says it expects the deluxe audio start to be available sometime in Q4.
Bigscreen Beyond Review
With the audio situation in the back of our minds, we can certainty talk about the rest of the headset. Before we dive in, here’s a look at the tech specs for some context:
IPD (fixed, customized per headset) eye-relief (fixed, customized per facepad)
IPD Adjustment Range
53–74mm (fixed, single IPD value per device)
Connectors
DisplayPort 1.4, USB 3.0 (2x)
Accessory Ports
USB 2.0 (USB-C connector) (1x)
Cable Length
5m
Tracking
SteamVR Tracking 1.0 or 2.0 (external beacons)
On-board Cameras
None
Input
SteamVR Tracking controllers
On-board Audio
None
Optional Audio
Audio Strap accessory, USB-C audio output
Microphone
Yes (2x)
Pass-through view
No
Weight
170–185g
MSRP
$1,000
MSRP (with tracking & controllers)
$1,580
And here’s where it fits into the landscape of high-end PC VR headsets from a pricing standpoint:
Bigscreen Beyond
Varjo Aero
Vive Pro 2
Reverb G2
Valve Index
Headset Only
$1,000
$1,000
$800
–
$500
Full Kit
$1,580
$1,580
$1,400
$600
$1,000
Smaller Than it Looks
Bigscreen Beyond is an incredibly unique offering in a landscape of mostly much larger and much bulkier PC VR headsets. Beyond is even smaller than it looks in photos. In fact, it’s so small that it nearly fits inside other VR headsets.
Getting it so small required that the company individually create custom-fit facepads for each and every customer. Doing so involves using an app to 3D scan your face, which is sent to the company and used as the blueprint to make the facepad that ships with your headset. At present the face scan is only supported on iOS devices (specifically iPhone XR or newer) which means anyone without access to such a device can’t even order the headset.
And this isn’t an illusion of customization, the company isn’t just picking from one of, say, 5 or 10 facepad shapes to find the one that most closely fits your face. Each facepad is completely unique—and the result is that it fits your face like a glove.
Photo by Road to VR
That means zero light leakage (which can be good for immersion, but problematic for the reasons described above). The headset is also dialed in—at the hardware level—for your specific IPD, based on your face scan.
Eyebox is Everything
If there’s one thing you should take away from this review it’s that Bigscreen Beyond has very good visuals and is uniquely conformable, but getting your eyes in exactly the correct position is critical for a good experience.
The eyebox (the optimal optical position relative to the lenses) is so tight that even small deviations can amplify artifacts and reduce the field-of-view. In any other headset it would be far too small to make the headset even a viable product, but Beyond’s commitment to custom-fit facepads makes it possible because they have relatively precise control over where the customer’s pupil will sit.
The first facepad the company sent me fit my face well, but the headset’s sweet spot (the clarity across lens) felt so tight that it made the already somewhat small field-of-view feel even smaller—too small for my taste. But by testing the headset without any facepad, I could tell that having my eyes closer would give me a notably better visual experience.
When I reached out to the company about this, they sent back a newly made facepad, this time with and even tighter eye-relief. This was the key to opening up the headset’s field-of-view, sweet spot, and improving some other artifacts just enough to the point that it didn’t feel too much of a sacrifice next other headsets.
Here’s a look at my field-of-view measurements for Bigscreen Beyond (with the optimal facepad), next to some other PC VR headsets. While the field-of-view only increased slightly from the first facepad to the second, the improvement in the sweet spot was significant.
Personal Measurements – 64mm IPD (minimum-comfortable eye-relief, no glasses, measured with TestHMD 1.2)
Bigscreen Beyond
Varjo Aero
Vive Pro 2
Reverb G2
Valve Index
Horizontal FOV
98°
84°
102°
82°
106°
Vertical FOV
90°
65°
78°
78°
106°
It’s sort of incredible that moving from the first facepad to the second made such an improvement. At most, the difference in my pupil position between the two facepad was likely just a handful of milimeters. But the headset’s eye-box is just so tight that even small deviations will influence the visual experience.
Comfort & Visuals
Photo by Road to VR
With the ideal facepad—and ignoring the annoyance of dealing with an off-board audio solution—Bigscreen beyond felt like I jumped a few years forward into the future of headsets. It’s tiny, fits my face perfectly, the OLED displays offer true blacks, and the resolution is incredibly sharp with zero evidence of any screen-door-effect (unlit space between pixels).
While it does feel like you give up some field-of-view compared to other headsets, and there’s notable glare, the compact form-factor and light weight really makes a big difference to wearability.
With most VR headsets today I find myself adjusting them slightly on my head every 10 or 15 minutes to relieve pressure points and stay comfortable over a longer period. With Beyond, I found myself making those adjustments far less often, or not at all in some sessions. When playing over longer periods you just don’t notice the headset nearly as much as others, and you’re even less likely to have the occasional bonk on the headset from your flailing controllers, thanks to its much smaller footprint.
Brightness vs. Persistence
While Beyond’s resolution is very good—with resolving power that I found about equal to Varjo’s Aero headset—the default brightness level (100) leads to more persistence blur than I personally think is reasonable. Fortunately Bigscreen makes available a simple utility that lets you turn down brightness in favor of lower persistence blur.
I found that dialing it down to 50 was roughly the optimal balance between brightness and persistence for my taste. This level keeps the image sharp during head movement, but leaves dark scenes truly dark. Granted you can adjust the brightness on the fly if you really want.
Of course this will be content dependent, and Bigscreen is ostensibly tuning the headset with an eye toward movie viewing (considering their VR app is all about movie watching), where persistence blur wouldn’t be quite as bad because you move your head considerably less while watching a movie vs. playing a VR game.
Clarity
While Beyond doesn’t have Fresnel lenses, its pancake optics still end up with a lot of glare in high contrast scenes. I’d say it’s not quite as bad as what you get with most Fresnel optics, but it’s still quite notable. While Fresnel lenses tend to create ‘god rays’ which emanate from specific objects in the scene, Beyond’s pancake optics create glare that’s appears less directly attached to what’s in the scene.
Beyond the issues noted so far, other visual factors are all top notch: no pupil swim, geometric distortion, or chromatic aberration (again, this is all highly dependent on how well your facepad fits, so if you see much of the above, you might want to look into the fit of the headset).
John Carmack, legendary programmer and former CTO of Oculus, is known for giving his unfiltered thoughts on almost every aspect of the XR industry. While he departed Meta in December, concluding his “decade in VR,” Carmack is still very interested in the medium, as he recently went hands-on with one of the latest PC VR headsets to hit the scene, the slim and light Bigscreen Beyond.
Bigscreen Beyond is a tethered PC VR headset that uses Valve’s SteamVR tracking standard, which starting at $1,000 for just the headset makes it an interesting value proposition for users already hooked into the SteamVR hardware ecosystem. It’s largely praised for its slim and light profile, which is thanks to the inclusion of pancake lenses and micro-OLEDs, serving up 2,560 × 2,560 pixels per eye at 70 to 90 Hz refresh.
You’ve probably already heard what we think of it though. Now for the master:
“Bigscreen Beyond feels like a prop for a futuristic movie, but it works!” Carmack said in a Twitter thread on Monday. “Far and away the smallest and lightest PC VR headset.”
That’s high praise coming from a key figure in the Oculus genesis story, not to mention co-founder and lead programmer of id Software, the studio behind pioneering ’90s 3D games Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake.
Image courtesy John Carmack
To hear all of Carmack’s thoughts on Bigscreen Beyond, we’ve formatted his tweets below for easier reading:
Bigscreen Beyond feels like a prop for a futuristic movie, but it works! Far and away the smallest and lightest PC VR headset.
As a result of the iPhone based face scanning before ordering, the fit is perfect, with zero light leaks. The custom printed facial interface is comfortable, but not breathable, so it isn’t great for fitness activities.
The prescription lens inserts snap in with magnets and work well. The visuals are a trade off vs Quest Pro. The resolution is clearly higher, but there are more internal reflections in the pancake optics, and the quality falls off more toward the edges. There are parts of the view where screens look fantastic, good enough for actual productivity work, but not across the entire view.
I sorely miss integrated audio. Having to mess with headphones severely impacts the minimalist feel of the headset. I know some people have strong opinions, but I still feel Quest made the right decisions around audio.
The cable to the PC and the tracking base stations are the biggest downside. The magic of stand-alone VR is real, and while some people happily trade it away for the raw power and flexibility of a PC, I wouldn’t recommend any PC VR setup as an entry point to VR.
For people considering an upgrade to a PC VR system, Bigscreen Beyond should be in the mix. I am very happy to see this extreme focus on light weight, and I hope it impacts Meta’s future designs.
In a follow-up tweet, Carmack points to a review from Adam Savage’s Tested, which he says “hits most of my points in more depth.”
In it, Tested’s Norman Chan reports back after having lived with the headset for a month, using a development unit as the office’s primary PC VR headset. Chan shows through-the-lens images, and discusses “the good, the bad, and the weird with this unique approach to high-end bespoke VR,” the video’s description reads.
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.
Image courtesy Bigscreen
Bigscreen Beyond starts pre-orders today, priced at $999. Ostensibly, 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.”
Image courtesy Bigscreen
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.
Image courtesy Bigscreen
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.
Bigscreen 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)
