System: Valve Index, HTC Vive & Oculus Rift
Price at Time Of Review: £5.59
Comfort Rating: Green (No Movement)
Genre: Tool/App,
Input: Keyboard & Mouse
Best Playing Position: Standing or Sitting
Multi-Player: No
Age Rating: PG
Description: Turn your virtual reality headset into a multi-monitor system! Breakroom lets you use Windows inside VR. You can surround yourself with applications. Work on Photoshop while watching a Youtube tutorial or just watch your favourite movie while playing online poker and browsing Reddit, while sitting on the beach or in a Japanese garden. You can finally use your headset for other things than gaming and free yourself from the limitations of the physical monitor.
In Breakroom, you can choose between a range of soothing environments. You can use all your regular Windows 10 applications, move them around your virtual space and create the ultimate personalized workspace. You start your experience with your mouse where you right-click anywhere to see a menu. Use the menu to bring your open applications into Breakroom, open Windows Explorer or the Start Menu to open new applications. You can change backgrounds and skyboxes, rearrange your applications within Breakroom or open the tutorial.
Review: I think deep down most PC owners want a multiscreen setup. But what if you don’t have the room or have spent the money on it on a new VR headset? Well, the good news is there is a range of virtual desktop programs to choose from to give you just that and the new kid on the block ‘Breakroom’ would like you to consider using it. There are a few things that make Breakroom standout from the rest. Use of the mouse instead of the touch controllers, the way you can change and set your own working environment. But it also has all the things you would expect from a VR desktop. The ability to make and shape new application windows and multimedia playback including 360 videos in the latest update.
Breakroom has gone down the route of the comfort of environment before features and application use which does make it a better place to work than many of the other programs that offer preset working environments. While there is also a tutorial to discover how to use the program I found with just a few mouse clicks I was able to work most of it out myself which is a real credit to the program.
Until there is a better way to present and use a virtual keyboard I am not personally a fan of these “VR desktops” (I found the use of the mouse annoying as well). But I do understand that they have their uses. Breakroom does a lot better job than most the VR desktop programs because it gives you some good environment options to play around with. From changing the scenery to changing the sky, the idea is you can mix and match to find your perfect working environment.
