In addition to its Rift HMD, Oculus continues to work on the Touch, the VR controller it initially revealed earlier this year. You would expect the two devices to come out at the same time in the Q1 2016 release window, but Oculus delivered some bad news: The controller is delayed, with a new release date set for the “second half of 2016.”
The company didn’t provide any specific reason for the delay, stating only that it will need more time in the pursuit of “perfecting Touch.” However, Oculus did share a few details on the controller’s overall progress. In the past few months, there were improvements to ergonomics as well as other changes to make it “more comfortable, reliable, and natural.” At the moment, developers are working on more changes, specifically with the hand pose recognition software.
The extra time also gives Oculus the ability to create more pre-production versions of the Touch for developers. This allows ample time to not only integrate Touch controller support on various VR games, but Oculus also gets feedback from developers on how to further improve controller functionality.
Unlike Touch, the Rift is still on schedule for a Q1 2016 release. Pre-orders for the Rift will start “very soon,” whereas Touch pre-orders start a few months before an exact release date is confirmed.
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