Oculus has got in hot water over its exclusive games this week, but over on the other side of the fence SteamVR just incorporated a major new piece of tech from its rival.
According to multiple reports from developers, Valve’s platform for VR content has just integrated the Oculus Touch position-tracked controllers. That is according to a tweet by Daniel Nyberg, which shows Oculus Touch icons have been added to the SteamVR beta box. Nyberg, who himself is a VR developer, noted that this wasn’t his own set up but instead taken from a Slack conversation between VR developers. Other comments replying to the tweet, including from BigScreen‘s Darshn Shankar, also confirm that it works.
That’s good news for both VR devs and users alike, as it means Oculus Touch will be supported in games released on Steam once the kit is released in the second half of this year, and not just locked to the Oculus Home store like some Rift exclusive titles are. Of course, the first full SteamVR headset, the HTC Vive, already has its own pair of position-tracked controllers in the form of a set of wands that arrive with the HMD itself. Expect a lot more parity between the platforms when Touch launches.
This week at E3 Oculus revealed four new Touch titles in Wilson’s Heart, SUPERHOT VR, Killing Floor: Incursion, and Ripcoil. It also revealed that Touch will be launching with 30 games, and that we can expect to hear more details about that release this fall. We currently don’t know what the kit will be priced at, nor if Oculus will be offering a bundle with both the controllers and the Rift. We do know that those that pre-ordered the Rift will have secured a place in line to grab the Touch controllers, however.
Touch will mark a new era for the Rift, so the sooner it gets here the better.
