The Oculus Touch Motion Controller Review

Reviews
By Kevin Carbotte
published

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What Can You Do With Touch?

The Touch controllers adds your hands to the virtual world, opening Oculus' Rift platform to some new experiences. Touch controllers allow you to reach out and interact with virtual environments. You can pull levers, flip switches, pick up objects, or point and shoot guns.

In the first eight months of Rift availability, 99 games were made available on the Oculus Store. You would think that after three years of developer kits out in the wild, there'd be a lot more content. But judging from the list launching alongside Touch, many developers were holding off for the debut of hand controllers. Oculus is revealing more than 50 titles that either have Touch support or are built specifically for Touch controllers.

Several of the Touch-enabled games are available already on the Oculus platform, such as Crytek’s The Climb, Psytek Games’ Windlands, and nDream’s The Assembly. Other games are making their way from Steam VR over to the Oculus Store, such as Owlchemy Labs’ Job Simulator, I-illusions’ Space Pirate Trainer, and Stress Level Zero’s Hover Junkers.

Furthermore, Oculus has a few exclusive titles in its corner. Dead and Buried is a multiplayer first-person shooter developed by Gunfire Games, and The Unspoken is a competitive multiplayer wizard dueling game developed by Insomniac Games. Both are exclusive to Oculus, and the company is giving free copies to everyone who pre-ordered Touch.

Touch also opens the door for art applications on the Rift platform. Three titles launch alongside the Touch controller. Medium, from Oculus Studios, is a virtual clay molding app freely available to all Touch owners. If illustrations are more your style, Quill offers an unlimited canvas to draw anything your heart desires. Those preferring a bit of anarchy might be drawn to the Kingspray Graffiti Simulator, which lets you paint anything you'd like onto the walls of industrial buildings.

Steam Catalog

In addition to the Touch content available through Oculus' Store, Touch controllers give you access to a massive library on Valve’s Steam platform. Valve’s approach to virtual reality is more open than Oculus’. It generously allows support for other VR hardware to its platform, so most of the content playable on HTC's Vive is compatible with the Rift/Touch combination.

Steam VR is smart enough to detect the headset and controllers you have plugged into your computer. Valve even designed icons for the Rift, Oculus sensor, and Touch controllers. Curiously, Steam VR works with multiple Oculus sensors, but only shows two sensor icons. If you have a third sensor, it uses the Lighthouse icon.

Steam VR lets the Rift access HTC's Chaperone system, but relies on Oculus' drivers for the tracking calibration. Even if you don’t plan to purchase content on the Oculus Store, you must still use the Oculus software for sensor setup. Once they're calibrated, you can run the Steam VR setup to configure the SteamVR compositor boundaries and controller calibration.


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Kevin Carbotte

 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

21 Comments Comment from the forums
  • edhem
    So it appears that the Oculus setup costs more than the HTC Vive, and for someone who does not have Donald Trump hands it might be uncomfortable? In addition, it appears that the Facebook Rift is not that easy to use for non-gamers, which to me seems to be very unusual for Facebook.
    Reply
  • scolaner
    After spending a couple of days with these things at OC3, I was super impressed. One thing I wish for, though--and Kevin pointed out--is control over (for lack of a better term) the DPI. I like to dial down my mouse DPI somewhat, and I want to do the same with the Touch controllers.
    Reply
  • stairmand
    I didn't bother to order these for my Rift, too expensive and the whole room-scale bit of VR didn't impress me. Driving games, flight sims etc are amazing but everything else seems a bit mediocre to me.
    Reply
  • dark_lord69
    I have an Oculus but having a hard time convincing myself to buy these $200 controllers.

    When I first bought a controller it was about $25-30, which seemed like a lot for a controller. Then I bought one for my PS3 and I thought $50 was completely insane. So, no surprise that I'm not willing to listen to my wife bitch about spending $200 on controllers that don't even come with a game...

    You'll have to do a lot to convince me that these are worth $200.
    Reply
  • Sakkura
    18963471 said:
    So it appears that the Oculus setup costs more than the HTC Vive, and for someone who does not have Donald Trump hands it might be uncomfortable? In addition, it appears that the Facebook Rift is not that easy to use for non-gamers, which to me seems to be very unusual for Facebook.

    It costs the same as the HTC Vive, actually less for people who preordered. And the Touch controllers are extremely comfortable in my average hands.

    As for ease of use, the Rift certainly has the Vive beat. Setup is very intuitive.

    18963675 said:
    I didn't bother to order these for my Rift, too expensive and the whole room-scale bit of VR didn't impress me. Driving games, flight sims etc are amazing but everything else seems a bit mediocre to me.

    I think you should reconsider, unless you're dead set on sticking to those genres. It is pretty damn mind-blowing when you first pick up and use these controllers.
    Reply
  • Chris_342
    I've seen maybe 5 reviews and none complained about the comfort and I agree. I have medium sized hands and after a long demo at Best Buy on 2 separate occasions I felt that the controllers were the best I've used for the games I played.
    Reply
  • kcarbotte
    18963471 said:
    So it appears that the Oculus setup costs more than the HTC Vive, and for someone who does not have Donald Trump hands it might be uncomfortable? In addition, it appears that the Facebook Rift is not that easy to use for non-gamers, which to me seems to be very unusual for Facebook.

    I wouldn't go so far as the say its not that easy. Most of the games don't rely on the buttons that much.
    The buttons and joysticks add complexity, which will deter newcomers, such as people who have never played a video game before. But i would argue that Touch controllers are no more intimidating than a gamepad to non-gamers. .
    Reply
  • problematiq
    Wish they used the "Lighthouse." I use them instead of the vive's wand.
    Reply
  • scolaner
    18963837 said:
    18963471 said:
    So it appears that the Oculus setup costs more than the HTC Vive, and for someone who does not have Donald Trump hands it might be uncomfortable? In addition, it appears that the Facebook Rift is not that easy to use for non-gamers, which to me seems to be very unusual for Facebook.

    It costs the same as the HTC Vive, actually less for people who preordered. And the Touch controllers are extremely comfortable in my average hands.

    As for ease of use, the Rift certainly has the Vive beat. Setup is very intuitive.

    18963675 said:
    I didn't bother to order these for my Rift, too expensive and the whole room-scale bit of VR didn't impress me. Driving games, flight sims etc are amazing but everything else seems a bit mediocre to me.

    I think you should reconsider, unless you're dead set on sticking to those genres. It is pretty damn mind-blowing when you first pick up and use these controllers.

    Note: Parse out room-scale from the Touch controllers...those are two different things. Both great. I might buy a Rift without the third cam. But I would definitely *not* buy one without the Touch controllers at this point...they're really, really great.

    Reply
  • kjohnsen045
    A solution to the hand cramping issue the author had is to use something like Sugru to mold your own grip around the base
    https://sugru.com/
    Reply