There’s some confusion surrounding Oculus VR’s approach to Room Scale user-tracking for virtual reality (VR) right now. The company claims that its upcoming head-mounted display (HMD), the Oculus Rift, is capable of the feature that’s been prioritised within its main rival, HTC and Valve’s HTC Vive. But with its new position tracked controllers, Oculus Touch, not set to arrive until the second half of 2016 – and a second tracking unit along with it – developers and fans aren’t able to test out these claims for themselves. When that kit does arrive, however, the Oculus Rift should be fully capable to imitating the HTC Vive’s Room Scale support, ‘generally speaking’.
That is according to kit creator Palmer Luckey. Recently taking to Reddit to talk about the differences between the Oculus Touch and the HTC Vive’s own position tracked controllers, Luckey was asked if the Oculus Rift, two Oculus Touch controllers, and two tracking sensors set up as how the two Lighthouse tracking stations included with the HTC Vive are set up would be able to play titles that are in development for Valve’s HMD right now. His reply was simple: “Impossible to say with certainty until all the final hardware is out there, and game support depends on developers, but generally speaking, yes.”
No doubt many will still want to test this out for themselves before they accept Luckey’s statements, but sadly there’s still no word on when Oculus Touch will be arriving inside that broad launch window. Both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are up for pre-order now and cost $599 USD and $799 respectively. The former will start to ship on 28th March 2016 while the latter will begin deliveries a week later on 5th April.
Stay tuned to VRFocus for the latest on both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
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