This is not intended to be a complete review. These are my experiences from spending about two hours setting up and playing, and that’s it.
It’s hard for me to talk about Touch without making comparisons to Vive. The big drawback for Oculus is that all cameras have to be physically cabled in to the PC. Lighthouse requirements are simpler in that both base stations just need to be across from each other and near power (and for power, you can even go wireless with one of those 12V battery power packs).
Given these limitations, I put one sensor on my mantle facing downward, and the other on the empty Touch box facing upward, about 5 feet apart from each other. That worked fine playing most games but caused problems playing Basketball (see below), though I tried to be conscious of making sure at least one camera had a clear line of sight while I was in-game.
The setup screens do a good job of walking user through the process, though it would be nice to be able to use a controller button to advance to the next screen (once the controllers are paired) rather than having to go back to the computer to click Next» with the mouse.
These labels didn’t line up, but I assume it’s because I set up using my 65” TV as my display.
First Contact — this is a neat tutorial that children of the 80’s will especially relate to. It walks you through several activities designed to exercise different Touch gestures like pointing and grasping. Oh and apparently if you already know how to use Touch and want to skip past, there’s no way to exit I could easily find (they trap input from the Oculus button). It left me frustrated with having to walk over to the PC to quit out.
The Unspoken — real potential. I like the mechanic of using different gestures to cast spells. Oddly, when I launched it again, it looks like I have to start over from the very beginning? This may be a premature assessment; I’ll spend more time with it today and update.
VR Sports Challenge — more polished than I expected, with some genuinely funny moments. It feels like a really long load time, and I can envision myself getting tired of watching the player animations every time I want to fire the game up. Football was fun, and I admit to feeling anxious (in a good way) when standing in the pocket seeking out open receivers. I only did basketball for a minute as the Touch controller in my right hand would lose tracking when I held it above my head to shoot the ball. I haven’t tried any other sports yet.
Dead and Buried — went through the tutorial but left before I played a match. Not the game’s fault, as I wanted to move on to get a feel for some other Touch games. I’ll definitely play this again soon with Oculus friends.
Quill — doesn’t launch. Returns me to Oculus Home after a few seconds.
Medium — doesn’t launch. Returns me to Oculus Home after a few seconds.
Superhot — excited to try this one, based on reviews. Will purchase and play today.
Audioshield — since this is my favoritest Vive game, I’d like to play this on Rift so I don’t have to keep swapping cables. Launching SteamVR seemed to recognize the Oculus gear (icons on the SteamVR control panel showed correctly) but no green lights.
Aside: The thing where you can browse, purchase, and install a game completely from Oculus Home — but then have to click Finish on your PC to finalize the install — is getting pretty old. There’s probably a way for me to work around it by setting it to always launch as Administrator (I’ve done zero Googling on this), but then that would bring its own challenges. How does Steam work around this?
Back to the controllers: overall I just don’t trust the tracking as much as Lighthouse. I acknowledge I don’t have the sensors ideally located, but the platform’s technical limitations of requiring the sensors be physically connected via USB make that unachievable for me in my living room. Also, this morning the kids moved the box one of my sensors is on, so I had to go through room setup again, which is fun.
The right people will love these controllers. They’re light and comfortable, with more possible commands and gestures than traditional controllers. The jury’s still out on whether they’re right for me.
Originally published at bbhart.com on December 11, 2016.