With Oculus’ Summer of Rift promotion still going on developers have got an issue. The new package now comes with the Oculus Touch controllers as standard – which is great – but the Xbox One gamepad is no longer supplied, so new headset owners won’t be able to play any of Oculus Rift’s early titles unless they payout for a compatible controller. This means studios will need to ensure their videogames are Oculus Touch compatible so they don’t miss out on potential sales. CCP Games’ multiplayer EVE: Valkyrie was a launch title, ideally suited to gamepads, recently however the studio has released beta support for Oculus Touch.
As you might expect, controlling a spaceship with motion controls isn’t going to be the most accurate or intuitive solution – especially in the heat of combat – and CCP Games agrees, saying in a blog post: “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.”
The studio however realised that it still needed to support Oculus Touch in some way, so its come up with a beta release to test things out. So there are no motion controls, instead Oculus Touch behaves just like a normal gamepad in the following layout:
- Yaw: Left Thumbstick LEFT or RIGHT
- Pitch: Left Thumbstick UP or DOWN
- Roll: Right Grip Button or Left Grip Button
- Primary Fire: Right Trigger
- Secondary Fire: Left Trigger
- Ability: X Button
- Boost: A Button
- Brake: B Button
- Target Select: Left Thumbstick CLICK
- Deploy Drone: Right Thumbstick UP
- Com Alerts: Right Thumbstick CLICK and HOLD + Right Thumbstick UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT and Combinations of these
- Tactical Menu (pause): Menu Button
- Re-Calibrate HMD: Menu Button (depress for 2 seconds)
- Oculus Home Menu: Oculus Button
CCP Games does note that the setup isn’t perfect – hence why it’s in beta – as there’s no way to cancel a missile lock, however its working with Oculus to try and resolve the issue. At least it means that those who’ve recently bought the headset can still play one of the most popular cross-platform videogames available.
As further details are released, VRFocus will keep you updated.