Thanks to all the great deals on Oculus hardware this summer, the number of people using the Oculus Touch controller has skyrocketed. In response to player demand, EVE: Valkyrie developer CCP Games has added beta support for the Oculus controllers.
We have a hard time imagining a space-sim like EVE: Valkyrie with motion controls. How could something like the Oculus touch compare to the fidelity of a joystick or gamepad? CCP Games agrees.
In a post announcing Oculus Touch support, the developer wrote, “EVE: Valkyrie was designed to be played with a controller, and the developers spent a lot of time making sure flying your ship with one felt as smooth and intuitive as possible…Here’s the problem with using Oculus Touch: motion controls simply don’t give you the precision you need in Valkyrie. It’s not at all easy to turn your Wraith on a sixpence and line up a devastating salvo when you’re trying to fly it while waving your hands in the air; it actually feels less, not more, responsive.”
Despite these reservations, player demand drove CCP to give would-be pilots the option to use the Touch without motion control support. Unfortunately, there are dozens of ship functions to worry in EVE: Valkyrie, and only a limited number of buttons on Oculus’ controller, so at least one ability- the ability to cancel a missile lock- will be unavailable to Touch players. CCP says they’re working with Oculus to find a way around this issue, but that they “reasoned that you’d rather have Touch support with a little missing functionality than no Touch support whatsoever.”
