Oculus's VR motion controller Touch was publicly available as early as June 2015, but players must wait until the second half of 2016 before they can officially purchase it. Touch handles have been updated since the announcement. Now Oculus says the handle is almost finished and better than ever.
Oculus Touch
At the Cologne International Game Show in Germany this week, Jason Rubin, the content manager at Oculus, told us that the company’s highly anticipated Touch motion controller is now nearing completion. He also told us that the version seen at this year's E3 show is very close to the final version.
“At E3... we have a new version of the Touch, which has better tracking and wider scope than ever before,†he said. "The Touch at the show is very close to the final version. Now we have only made some minor adjustments, but the difference is not great."
Oculus Touch
Since the leaking of the Touch prototype in 2015, we haven't known how many improvements the handle has made, but Oculus has insisted from the beginning that Touch has “room-scale†tracking capabilities like HTC Vive, even if the company doesn’t care about this type of use. .
As for the release date and price of Touch, Rubin said "Oculus Connect 3... This will be a good place for publication."
Compare the half-month prototype of the Oculus Touch on the E3 (left) and the 2016 prototype (right). Note that neither version has an "enter" button.
We tried the latest version of Touch at E3 2016 and we noticed a slight change in the button layout and design of the handle. The ergonomics of the handle have also been fine-tuned relative to earlier prototypes, and most people believe the Touch is still impressive and is at the forefront of its class. This seems not only because of the shape of the controller, but more importantly, its size and center of gravity are close to the center.
Earlier this year, Oculus confirmed that Touch will be bundled with the "Medium" release, which is the company's VR painting tool. Not only that, more than 30 games with Touch will be launched this year, and hundreds of Touch games are under development.