Get touchy-feely with Oculus Rift Touch controllers
Oculus Rift blew away most of the people who donned the virtualreality head gear when it debuted just more than nine months ago — including me.
Yet for all the awesomeness you might have experienced immersing yourself inside graphically-rich 360-degree VR environments, the reality was that the Facebook-owned company left a void.
That would be the absence of Touch controllers that let you literally lend a virtual hand to the games and other VR experiences you engage in. It was a key reason why some VR aficionados preferred the rival HTC Vive system or Sony’s PlayStation VR. (For its part, Rift comes with an Xbox controller and palm-sized remote.)
Oculus’ long-delayed Touch controllers finally hit the market Tuesday, and my verdict after checking them out for a few days boils down to this: They earn an enthusiastic thumbs up.
Thanks to sensors that track your hand movements and gestures, the Touch controllers let you wield a sword, cast a fishing rod, unleash a slingshot, pick up objects and do more inside the various apps that exploit the technology. You’ll see your hands and fingers, or whatever the corresponding virtual objects that the Touch controllers morph into when you put on the Rift headgear. You can use the controllers to point a finger or make a fist.
Alas, the controllers don’t come cheap. They cost $199 for a pair, which is on top of the $599 that the Rift itself commands. And you’ll typically surrender another grand or more if you don’t already own the kind of robust personal computer that Rift requires.
Of course, after your initial investment into the Rift ecosystem, which includes whatever you pay for the games themselves, you’re not going to want to go all thrifty when it comes to springing for the controllers, no matter how expensive they are.
Oculus and its partners are launching 53 Touch-ready titles to coincide with the arrival of the controllers, and as it happens many of these titles require the use of Touch to play them, another super-strong incentive to part with your money. Each controller takes a single AA battery and includes a wrist strap, one index trigger, one grip trigger, two action buttons, a home or menu button, plus a clickable thumbstick. They are light, relatively compact and specifically designed for the left or the right hand — the functions of buttons on each controller vary. By contrast, HTC Vive’s controllers are more wand-like and have rechargeable built-in batteries, which, depending on your point of view, is either an advantage or disadvantage. The Rift Touch controllers come with a sensor you connect through USB to the PC that is identical to the sensor that already comes with the Rift. You’re meant to place the two sensors about 3 to 6 feet apart, and positioning them properly was about the only tricky part I encountered during the setup process.
You’ll want to keep in mind that some games require a large physical play area (7 feet by 5 feet), including the multiplayer ghost-inhabited Dead and Buried I tried in which you assume the role of virtual gunslinger with the goal of shooting the other guy before he shoots you. It’s apropos that inside the game, your Touchcontrolled hands turn into skeletons.
If you’re artistic and looking for more peaceful experiences, you’ll likely appreciate Medium, in which you can sculpt 3D objects with the controllers, or
Quill, which lets you paint inside a virtual-reality environment. They bring to mind Tllt Brush, my favorite experience on HTC Vive.
Oculus is late to the party with pricey controllers that in turn require an elaborate and expensive system. But to those who demand a richer experience, the sense of touch that Touch brings to the Rift elevates virtual reality into something that feels more real and a lot more engaging.