When the OCULUS RIFT BUNDLE first launched, it fell behind the HTC Vive for two crucial reasons: there were no motion controls and it couldn’t handle room scaling.
Add to this the HTC Vive’s ties to the more popular and established Steam store, and it was impossible to fully recommend the Oculus over its admittedly more expensive rival.
Since then, however, things have become a little more interesting in the world of VR. For starters, we’ve seen the arrival of the PlayStation VR. While the headset doesn’t match the tech specs of either the Vive or the Oculus Rift, it’s significantly cheaper and works with any PlayStation 4, which makes it far better value. The Oculus and Vive still requires a gaming PC with at least an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060, quad-core Intel Core i5 CPU and 16GB of RAM to work.
We’ve also seen the arrival of the Oculus Touch remotes, which make things significantly more competitive in the top-end VR market. The Touch controllers are Oculus’ answer to the HTC wands and let the headset match, if not beat, the HTC Vive when it comes to immersive gaming.
The controllers use twin sensors to track and detect gamers’ movements and are easier to set up than the Vive, which requires a wee bit of DIY to get working. I found the system worked best with the two sensors around a metre apart on a flat surface, pointing at the centre of your desired play area.
The controllers are significantly more ergonomic than the HTC Vive’s Wands, thanks to the fact that they use a more traditional joystick and button layout. The Vive Wands have a slightly atypical trackpad system that takes a while to get used to.
The Oculus Touch’s twin sensors offer limited room scaling, which means they can track your movements in a desired play area. This makes fast-paced shooters, such as Supershot, an absolute blast to play. The only downside is that with the setup out of the box, the controllers don’t work too well when you have your back to the sensors, which is an issue in games where you have to explore, or move around a lot, such as Arizona Sunshine.
To match the room-scaling experience of the HTC Vive, which has three sensors out of the box, you have to shell out for a third Oculus sensor. This makes it one of the most expensive VR options and results in setup being a little trickier too. To get it to work you’ll have to trail a wire from your PC to a point at the back of your play area, which isn’t ideal.
