Oculus announces “Touch” controller for VR headset

Dev partners announced; headset, controller will have retail launch in “Q1 2016.”

Sam Machkovech – Jun 11, 2015 1:34 pm | 69

Say hello to the Oculus Touch controllers. Credit: Megan Geuss

SAN FRANCISCO—A Thursday press conference from Oculus, the virtual reality headset manufacturer acquired by Facebook last year, showcased a variety of games and development partners ahead of the product’s official retail launch in “Q1 2016,” and it included the world premiere of the rig’s long-awaited, official controller: the Oculus Touch.

“You’ve heard us say that input is hard, but we got it right,” Oculus CEO Palmer Luckey said before showing off images of the new wireless controller prototype, code-named Half Moon. While they each include a joystick, two face buttons, and a trigger button—along with haptic feedback so that players can feel when they’ve touched something in a virtual world—they also have a small, bracelet-sized ring that sits around the user’s hands. This ring doesn’t just allow the Touch controllers to be tracked in virtual space; it will also purportedly track motions like waves, gestures, and other hand poses.

“Imagine pointing, waving, or giving a thumbs-up,” Luckey said. “These are the things that Half Moon enables.” That hand-tracking feature won’t see a real demonstration until next week’s E3, which Oculus will attend with a “ToyBox” demo to show off its capabilities.

Interestingly, Oculus said these Touch controllers, which didn’t have a price attached yet, will not be included in the basic Rift headset package, and they won’t reach customers until the “first half” of 2016. Instead, Oculus announced that each Rift would come with a wireless Xbox One controller—a fact announced by Microsoft’s Xbox chief Phil Spencer—which Luckey described as the “best” controller for many VR games. The Xbox One controller also allows users to stream games from their Xbox One through a Windows 10 PC to a virtual theater inside the Rift.

Two OLED screens

The final Oculus Rift headset was finally revealed, as well, and it will contain two OLED screens—an upgrade from the development kits’ single screen. Those screen will supposedly benefit from “no motion blur, jutter, or pixels” and can be individually adjusted for different pupil distances if needed. The wireless headset will be put on “like a baseball cap,” Oculus’ Brendan Iribe said, and while he said the headset would be light, he did not indicate an exact weight, nor a percentage drop in weight compared to prior development kits.

Credit: Megan Geuss

Preview game footage was shown, but of course, it had to appear on a boring ol’ 2D screen at the press conference. Among those games: Edge of Nowhere, a third-person game from Insomniac; Kronos, a third-person RPG from Gunfire Games (Hero Bound); and EVE Valkyrie, which we’ve tried out before. The above image listed other game companies who have signed on to produce Oculus games, including Harmonix, Ready At Dawn, and Square Enix.

The headset will launch with an “Oculus Home” storefront, which will offer a unique sort of demo: a sample VR environment for each game that users can enter and look around before paying for the full title.

Sadly, we didn’t receive further details about the headset’s launch—particularly price and exact launch date—and we’re not sure whether to expect those at E3, or whether we’d have to wait for the second Oculus Connect Conference coming this September.

Megan Geuss and Kyle Orland contributed to this report.