Oculus Start Package! And a review of Oculus Hardware, because why not?

I finally received my Oculus Start Package. Pretty sweet. You get gifted a Refurbished Oculus Rift & Touch, an Oculus Go, an Oculus Hoodie (size accuracy questionable, XL is very tight), an Oculus Tumbler glass, an Oculus Start Moleskine notebook and a pretty nice pen, and a Oculus Start Sticker.

Got my Oculus Start Box!

This is actually the first time I got to use an Oculus Rift/Touch and the Go. The Oculus Rift and Touch I can’t say was all that impressive seeing as how I’ve been running an HP WMR headset for a few months now. The WMR headsets have higher resolution than the Rift and my eyes definitely noticed. Also, I’m afraid my hands just seem too big for the Touch controllers. I had a real hard time utilizing the capacitive touch aspects of the controllers without the darn things kind of fumbling out of my hands. They’re not quite made for people with meaty paws, I think. Another issue with the Touch is that I could feel the rotation of the vibration motor in my hand. Like it was noticeable that I had an offset weight spinning around in there, as opposed to the subtle vibrations you might feel in the Vive wand or WMR controller. This may have been a result of having refurbished equipment so I don’t want to make a blanket judgement of the Oculus Touch over this, but it was weird. Really, when it came down to it, it wasn’t the hardware that I found impressive as far Oculus is concerned, it was their demo software; The Oculus First Contact experience was just visually stunning, and while I didn’t have quite a fully positive experience in it because of my fumbling of the controllers, it was still very cool. And something I’ve recommended to my friends. I do have to say, after having seen a lot of conversations on the Oculus subreddit regarding 360 constellation tracking with 2 sensors, I think they’re full of shit. I lost tracking a lot. Much more noticeably than the occasional tracking glitch I might have with the WMR controllers. I don’t know how much better a third camera sensor will make things, but 360 tracking with 2 sensors just doesn’t cut it. Oh! Also, lot of space where my nose is! Major light gap.

The Oculus Go is pretty interesting for what it is. A lot of padding; Maybe too much padding. The controller is a bit more bulkier than the gearVR, but it fits the hand better. Plays porn, Youtube, and Netflix fine. You know how it is. Pretty on par with my GearVR experiences.

That’s it! Now I’ve gotta learn how to get the Oculus API and SteamVR supported in Unity without having to make a million copies of projects and things. I’m thinking VRTK is going to be the way to go.
-steele

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