Gadgetory

I've been waiting months to wave point and give you a thumbs up in the oculus rift and now I can finally do it motion controls are one of the big things that makes virtual reality a totally new format and not just a fancy screen but when oculus ship does rift headset this spring its motion controllers weren't ready it came with an Xbox one controller which wasn't outright bad but it felt limiting like the rift was incomplete but just before the holidays oculus has fixed that let's go back to reality and take a look unlike PlayStation Move or the vibes controllers the oculus touch controllers are molded for each hand powered by disposable batteries on each one you'll find a trigger for your forefinger and a grip button that you'll squeeze by making a fist like the Xbox one controller it has a total of four face buttons and two analog sticks plus little buttons for menu options oculus touch reflects your hand motion in a way that's surprisingly close to just you know using your hands for one thing there are sensors all over each controller so it can tell where your hands are resting whether or not you're pushing a button it can't articulate every finger but it can guess that you're giving somebody a thumbs up or pointing your finger to poke something in VR even when it's not serving a gameplay purpose this is one of the little things that makes touch intuitive VR experiences still have to vastly simplify your hand gestures but it turns out that one of the constants is picking things up and holding them and touch does this really well closing your fingers around the grip button really feels like grabbing something in a way that's squeezing the vive slightly awkward grip doesn't it's a consistent standard that works across almost every game and it leaves one finger the one on the upper trigger free for other interactions the analog sticks can be used for anything from choosing a teleportation spot to beaming objects around and as with other motion controllers you can wave touch to simulate throwing a fireball waving to a robot shooting a gun or just about any other interaction the touch controllers use a band of leds and the same external tracking camera but the oculus rift uses the box includes a second camera in order to widen your range and oculus suggest you stagger them three to seven feet apart in front of you after you set them up you draw a line around your available space to create what oculus calls the Guardian boundary it's similar to the vise chaperone except that instead of snapping into a polygon the Guardian system directly follows the shape of your line so try to draw straight the two cameras can track a wide range with excellent precision but they can't track what they can't see so touch them less reliable when you turn around for true room-scale VR like you can get on the vibe oculus tells you to buy a third camera which is selling for another $80 if you stick with games on the oculus store this doesn't seem to be much of an issue they're subtly designed so you're almost always facing forward even if you're teleporting all around a map in a wizard duel or doing slow-motion firefights and this gives you a pretty good catalog the best games we've seen aren't really long but they're very playable and they're polished in a way a lot of bad games are even if a skills doesn't have some of the big names so you will with psvr oculus also has a great overall user interface including things like its avatars these slick stylized personas that any riff developer can let you take into their experience but motion controls get a big head start on the vibe so there are already a lot of games designed around 360-degree tracking we've seen some that work great on touch but they feel specifically rift friendly so others might set your controller drifting in the default camera setup and that's too bad because steamvr actually supports oculus touch which makes the rift into a pretty good substitute for many five games I feel this touch gives me confidence that we're not necessarily going to have a VR platform war or at least that I can enjoy just about every PC virtual reality game without having to buy both the rift and the vibe so the biggest question isn't which one of these platforms is better its whether there will be enough development across all platforms to make motion controlled virtual reality of things oculus is enthusiasms the funding games is a good sign on this front but especially what we're waiting to see how the whole touch catalogue shapes up it's still an early but if you're interested in the oculus rift touches an absolutely integral element even if it's sold separately I'm sure we'll still see games that you use a standard Xbox controller or the simple oculus remote but it touches where oculus is most interesting experiences and some of the best VR experiences period are shaping up it took years of development to get it but this is the oculus rift as it was meant to be at least this generation