The latest Bigscreen update makes big improvements to user-hosted rooms and remote desktop capabilities when streaming, alongside an increase in room capacity and other changes.
Shanks, one of Bigscreen’s developers, posted details of the update to Reddit. While there’s a lot of changes, the overwhelming theme of the update is improving the experience and video quality of rooms that use remote desktop and Windows PC desktop streaming.
Previously, a desktop PC stream shared in a user-hosted room with others would feature choppy video, low bitrate and an unreliable connection at times. With this new update, these connections should be much more reliable.
For those streaming their desktop PC to a user-hosted room, there are now dedicated servers that “massively improve video streaming quality with perfectly synced audio.” Bigscreen says this should allow users to watch movies, YouTube or play game together streamed from a PC without any issue. These rooms also now support up to 15 people at once.
The Bigscreen Remote Desktop app has also been overhauled, now featuring “ultra-low latency streams and improved video & audio quality,” particularly from a PC to Quest. When using the Bigscreen Remote Desktop app to stream to Quest, latency is now as low as sub-20ms with a bitrate of up to 100Mbps and support for 60fps over a local network, up from 30fps. This all also applies to social settings, with these remote desktop improvements also applying when others join your room with a remote desktop stream running.
For these remote desktop changes to take effect, you’ll need to download the new Bigscreen remote desktop app for your computer here.
There are a few smaller changes in the update as well. PC and Quest users are now available to host up to 15 people in one room. Spatial audio is now also implemented across the board, giving a greater sense of presence. Frame rate on Quest 1 has been improved as well, now hitting targets with 15 users in a room – previously it struggled to do so even with just 8 users.
Bigscreen says it’s looking to implement a friend system in the future, alongside support for remote desktop input streaming through devices such as gamepads. There’s also plans for a built-in YouTube app.
The Streaming update is available for Bigscreen now. You can view the full list of changes in more detail here.
