Oculus Touch

[Jan Ciger]

Hello,

I have finally received my Touch today. Whoa Batman, this is really what Rift should have been released with back in April!

What's in the box:

• "Sensor" (aka another IR camera)
  
• Controllers
• 2 AA batteries (one for each controller, hopefully they will work with rechargeables)
• A plastic "ring" gizmo - which is apparently a Rockband VR guitar controller (haven't seen that one mentioned before) connector. The thing is completely plastic and doesn't have any wires, batteries nor anything to it, so I suspect it is only some sort of adapter piece, but who knows - has anyone seen the guitar controller?

Install

• Didn't have much trouble with it, you pair the controllers, then calibrate the work space. If there are troubles with the "poor quality tracking" or "sensor not detected", it is likely a USB bandwidth problem and you may have to move one of the cameras to another (even USB 2.x) port. I am using a USB 3 hub and it didn't work with both cameras and the HMD on it. Had to move one of the sensor to another USB host controller on my PC. Also this test seems to require that the HMD is in view of the sensors - something the prompt on the screen does not tell you! There is a part where the setup prompts you to turn the sensors back and forth until it is happy, that is a bit fiddly because there is little feedback about what you are doing, unfortunately. 
• The Guardian (= Chaperone) setup is the same as with Vive - you take the controller and draw the boundaries of your space with it.

 

[Jan Ciger]

... continued (stupid fingers hit SEND before finished!)

Use 

• The tracking - well, I am not going to repeat stuff on the range, occlusions and other problems the tracking system has, enough has been written about that. Vive has better tracking, no discussion about that. That said, the tracking works well enough, certainly beats the pants off my Hydra I have been using with my Rift before. I had it setup for the front, 180deg angle (have only 2 cameras) and didn't really have problems unless I was really having my back towards the cameras. Of course, if the content is not designed for this kind of setup, the experience will be less than ideal.
   
• The ergonomics ... is interesting. It fits in the hand really well and someone has obviously put a lot of thought in the design of the controls - the palm trigger and the finger sensing is pure genius. It is obviously not comparable with a data glove, the finger sensors are only on/off and only for thumb and index fingers. However, even that allows to point naturally and to grab things by closing the hand into a fist. The Vive controller feels like a controller. Touch is trying very hard to convince you that that is your hand in the world and not a controller. It is not quite there yet, but it really feels good. Really big thumbs up to Oculus for this idea, this is trully innovative and I expect VR vendors to widely copy it - it simply works and likely costs peanuts to implement as almost every microcontroller today has a capacitive sensing support. 

The software

• I am not going to review the games, there will be enough reviews in the days to come, I am sure. But the introduction/tutorial in the "crazy scientist" workshop like straight from the Return to the Future, with the funny robot and "floppies" you have to insert to trigger the various interactions and to learn how to use the controllers is great. This is really what Oculus should have been released with, not those ridiculous non-interactive demos in the Dreamdeck. With that silly demo alone you can have fun for good 30 minutes. 

To conclude, I think Oculus has a winner with the Touch. It costs a lot, but hey, Hydra did cost about the same - and it is much much less capable. I only hope that they release support for Linux, so that I can actually develop with it. 

Regards,

Jan