Oculus Touch

I bought an Oculus Rift back in October and I’ve been enjoying it, playing whatever I could find that worked well with a VR headset and controller. My favorites are House of the Dying Sun and Lunar Lander. (Elite: Dangerous is also great but I’m terrified of destroying my ship repeatedly and becoming penniless.) I pre-ordered the Oculus Touch controllers and they arrived a few days ago. I’ve been playing Touch games constantly since I got them and the experience is absolutely incredible.

I’ve played games with an HTC Vive at a friend’s house and they were always a lot of fun. Vive’s wands have a good feel and are easy to use. And while the Touch controls have similar inputs (trigger, grip, control pad/stick, a few buttons), the way they feel in a game is significantly different. The Vive wands are represented in VR as a device you’re holding (similar to the wands themselves), while the Touch controls are represented as your own hands. These virtual hands mimic your real hands around the controller. It sounds like it might be a little weird, but the controls are so well done that it works out incredibly well.

The accuracy of the virtual hands hit me when I was talking to my girlfriend in my living room. I was in the Oculus Home app (after playing Bullet Train) and I turned to talk to her, looking through the gap around my nose. I was gesturing toward her, and I noticed that where my real hand ended, the virtual hand began, and it was matching my gesture perfectly. I was pointing toward her, and my virtual finger was pointing just like my real hand. It was incredible. I moved my hand a bit and the virtual hand was matching the position and gesture pretty accurately.

In games made for the Touch controls, you can really start to feel like your hands are in the game. Holding weapons just feels right, whether you’re holding a handgun, a rifle, a bow, or a sword. Gestures can be done with broad motions or pointing. You can communicate with other players by pointing (👉), thumbs-up (👍), or OK’s (👌). I saw two players fist-bump. Then I learned I could make obscene gestures (👉👌). It’s awesome. Playing games designed for Vive’s wands don’t have quite the same level of interaction.

The only downside to the Touch controls are the downsides to the Oculus itself. The cameras certainly aren’t as good for room-scale, and their tracking isn’t as precise as the Vive. For games that are mostly forward-facing (and many games are), the Oculus works perfectly fine, and the setup with two cameras along the same wall is a bit more convenient than Vive’s opposite corners setup. You can still look around or behind you, but interacting with things directly behind you can be an issue if you hide a controller from one of the cameras. However, the precision is generally good enough, and most games tend to keep you facing forward, so these downsides are relatively minor.

Overall, I enjoy the Touch controllers more, but honestly, both HTC and Oculus have great VR products. UploadVR has a comparison of the controllers from back in June that I’ve found pretty accurate.

Now I’m eager for Steam’s winter sale so I can stock up on VR titles…