o, even as we approach the official release of the Oculus, we can’t deny the sticker shock of its price and hardware requirements that we’ve all been talking about since the last holiday—it’s still kind of a big deal.
However that may be though, there’s no denying the allure and technical performance of the finalized set in action. As I made my way towards the Oculus exhibit at GDC 16, I went with the baited hopes that the experience would be able to convince me that this peripheral was going to be worth everything that its eventual price of admission will make it out to be.
I can be honest, I still haven’t arrived to a conclusion about that, but I can tell you this—The Oculus Rift and Touch is pretty fucking rad, and definitely better than any previous iteration of the tech that I’ve seen before.
Being geared up within the demo room with the headset, and Touch controllers needed to play (by the way, it would seem that Oculus has also ditched the “Ski Goggle” design, and opted for the a Headset visor one like the Morpheus) I mentally prepared myself for the standard hassle of letting me eyes naturally refocus everything that was seen on the display as best as they could, and came to a startling realization.
I didn’t have to, that “sweet spot” that you’ll often hear from people recounting from their VR experience is one of the biggest determining factors of performance, and its ability to manufacture the illusory effects of VR; I was able to get down within seconds.
I then asked the staff assisting me with my demo if he would mind taking the headset off of me, and then putting it back on again, to which he kindly complied, and sure enough; I was able to land at that “sweet spot” of resolution again—as silly as it may sound, this was one of the most impressive takeaways from my time at the Oculus exhibit.
Gearing up, I was strapped with some bicameral controllers that functioned as one interface with one another, similar to the concept behind the PS Move’s application with the Morpheus, only with a more traditional button layout.
The left controller featured two of the standard front-facing four buttons used in most modern controller interfaces, each of them being adjacent to the inner-side of their respective thumb-sticks. On the back/bottom of the peripherals, were the conventional shoulder and back-trigger buttons as well; a motion-controlled option with a more traditional sense of input and feel to it-the Touch is a solid add-on to the Oculus experience.
Putting it to the test, the game that was being showcased was VR Real Sports; a mini-game showcase that featured the play aspects that several major ball games, and the first stop was basketball. The first segment was a free-throw contest, and in terms of dimension and perspective, the mechanics all functioned with the most fluid detection and accuracy that I’ve ever seen out of an Oculus Rift. Grabbing ball, after ball, and hurling them at the net the best I could, and the nuances to the physics, and expected collisional effects all performed in a seamless, and comprehensible fashion.
As I moved on to the slam-dunk contest, my B-ball avatar ran it down the court, and transported me to a the few seconds of slow-motion reaction time that I needed to get tricky with the dumb ball, before planting over the rim—the performance here was just as consistent, and even more impressive. Whether it was a theatric windmill motion, or loop-de-loop of the ball behind my back and above my head again, the basic fundamentals of coordinating these feats all worked out wonderfully when I put them to the test with the Touch.
Shifting over to the Football portion of the demo, I placed in the role of the quarterback, where I had to call for different plays, and deliberate between receivers in real-time before throwing the all-important pass; the ebb and flow here worked just as beautifully.
One of the biggest concerns I had going into the demo was just how much body movement did I have to exert, and in conjunction, how much room did I have to play around with as well. I have the fortune of saying that I didn’t ever risk stumbling out of the allotted play zone, and the estimate of distance that I moved around with was a modest 2 feet at best. Any time that the gameplay shifted from passing the ball to receiving it, the physics and response made it to where any movement needed to complete the pass was fluid, and minimal.
Leaving the exhibit, I have to admit that the technical achievement of the Oculus Rift, and its Touch controller does make the choice of adoption for VR trickier to decide upon. The oculus is currently slated for release on March 28th, with 30 games available during launch, and we can only wait and see if the titles will sustain a device that, from a performance standpoint, I can confidently say is poised to deliver.