SteamVR, Valve’s foundation for VR experiences running on its digital store, has supported Oculus’ Touch controllers since June. Today, though, that support has received a major beta update.
Though SteamVR previously let you use Touch in games that supported position-tracked controls, they would appear as the Vive wands in VR, unless the given experience used its own specific model for hands. Several people have now reported that SteamVR has integrated rendered models of Touch. That means when you’re using the controllers and you’re meant to see them in VR, you’ll see what you’re actually holding, and not the HTC equivalent.
While it won’t make a huge difference to the experiences themselves — controls and interactions will remain the same — it will certainly help players get a better sense of where their hands really are in the virtual world. You can see the controllers in action on SteamVR in the tweet below from Paintey and Climbey developer, Brian Lindenhof. Users are also reporting that you can see the Touch controllers in Audioshield [Review: 7/10], a game that isn’t currently available on Oculus Home.
@Oculus Touch started (visually) working with @SteamVR! 😀#VR #Gamedev
The video is a little more zoomed in than I expected, sorry! pic.twitter.com/8Ujn0xWZsu— Brian Lindenhof (@TheShadowBrain) December 8, 2016
Oculus Touch launched earlier this week with well over 50 launch titles, many of which were already available on Vive. If you opt-in to play games outside of Oculus Home, you’ll be able to use them in compatible Steam games that support this type of input.
As for using Vive controllers in Touch exclusive games via ReVive, don’t expect a reversal of the situation, though that’s somewhat understandable, as that’s a hack and not Oculus allowing Vive owners access to its content.
