Since launching Bigscreen Beyond 2 and 2e, we've continued to bring new features to the lightest VR headset on the market, from Dynamic Foveated Rendering and improved eye tracking (now in beta) on the Beyond 2e, to new accessories like our Universal-Fit Cushion, Light Seal, and upcoming Halo Mount. And today, we're excited to announce another feature to make your headset even better: 3DoF Mode.
3DoF Mode lets you use your Beyond headset without base stations and without SteamVR. Here's what you can do with it:
Your favorite flat games on a giant screen
A virtual desktop, without the overhead
Using your desktop in SteamVR can be a great experience, but comes with a lot of performance overhead. 3DoF Mode is lighter on system resources, so you can dedicate more power to productivity.
No controllers necessary
3DoF Mode can be fully adjusted using just your gaze (where your head is facing; no eye tracking needed). You don't have to clutter your desk with a controller to adjust your view.
Take Beyond 2 with you.
At just 107 grams for the headset, it's easy to take your headset on the go. Plug the Link Box into a laptop and bring your headset with you. You'll need two USB-A ports and a DisplayPort 1.4 output. USB-C with DisplayPort Alt Mode works too, as long as that port runs off the laptop's discrete (dedicated) GPU.
But what is 3DoF, anyway?
"DoF" stands for degrees of freedom. It's a way of counting how many directions something can move in a space.
6DoF is rotational and positional, tracking where your head is in 3D space as you lean forward, backward, and side to side. For 6DoF in full VR, you need something to anchor the headset within a space to determine its location. That information is determined by using base stations or outward-facing cameras on a standalone headset.
But if you're planning on being stationary, that extra tracking hardware isn't essential.
3DoF is rotational-only: it tracks the three ways your head rotates, turning left and right, looking up and down, and tilting side to side. This is all detected through Inertial Measurement Units, or IMUs, in your headset. No base stations, cameras, or external reference points are needed.
One of our favorite uses for 3DoF Mode is getting an immersive racing experience in titles without VR support. While vibe-coding a mod to get VR in Forza Horizon 6 might be fun, it's not that easy. With 3DoF Mode, you can get an immersive experience by curving your display around you. It's like having your own triple-monitor racing sim, except it's completely bezel-free and doesn't take up nearly as much space.
Available right now on all Bigscreen Beyond headsets!
We also wanted to include some current feature limitations of 3DoF Mode.
- You can't watch 3D content in 3DoF Mode. It's a flat experience only.
- You can't make virtual displays. 3DoF Mode only gets as many monitors as you have connected to your system.
- Over long sessions or sessions with a lot of movement, there is some image drift, which varies per device. You can easily recenter your display using the menu bar.
- Your virtual screen is only adjustable via gaze tracking in 3DoF Mode.
3DoF Mode is available in our utility for NVIDIA users, and AMD support is coming soon! To enable it, click the little monitor icon in the utility, then turn on 3DoF Mode.
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