What separates the Oculus Rift from budget virtual reality headsets like the Gear VR or Google Cardboard is that it will allow users to have a virtual reality experience that’s interactive, and not just visual. Sure, you can use a controller or a mouse and keyboard, but using the Oculus Touch controller, Rift users will be able to use hand gestures to interact with their virtual environments. The problem is, the Touch won’t be launching until a few weeks, or perhaps even months, after the Rift launches next year.
Oculus has announced that their ‘Touch’ VR controllers will be released in the second half of 2016. Previously the company had expected the Oculus Touch release date to come in the first half of the New Year. After recently announcing a slight delay of Oculus Rift headset pre-orders, the company today said in a blog post that the accompanying Touch controllers will see a release date in the second half of 2016 rather than the first half, as previously stated earlier in 2015. The company had also said earlier this year that Touch pre-orders would open alongside the Oculus Rift pre-orders (now coming “soon after the New Year”); with the new announcement saying that pre-orders for Touch will open “a few months prior to launch,” it would seem that this will no longer be the case. “The feedback on Touch has been incredibly positive, and we know this new timeline will produce an even better product, one that will set the bar for VR input. We appreciate your patience and promise Touch will be worth the wait,” reads the update. Oculus further says that they’re creating “larger numbers of pre-production runs” to get early Touch hardware out to developers to begin crafting content for the VR controller.
