At Valve’s Steam Dev Days in Seattle, Washington, they showed off new VR controllers that look a lot different than the Vive’s current generation of touch, motion controllers.
Vive’s current controllers require you to firmly hold in your hand through your game experience to track your hand movements. You’re also using the trackpad and trigger for games that need buttons like FPS games. The new controllers look wildly different; for starters, the new controller is strapped around your wrist.
The most notable improvement to the new controllers is the ability to track your fingers, allowing you to close your hand in games. This new tracking layer could allow developers to build in functions that allow you to throw balls, or pick up items in games.
Valve hasn’t released a date when we could see these hit stores, but Valve is known to test their products in semi-public fashion. They do this to solicit feedback and examine how these features or devices fare with the public using them.
I’m interested in how these controllers feel and if it feels natural when you try and throw a ball in a VR game. The problem I could see is you either not have any feedback or you close your hand all the way, crushing the ball or other objects. If there’s haptic feedback they could have the issue already resolved, but more than likely, this is in the early development and they’re just showing what could be done.
I’d love to hear your thoughts – Tell us in the comments below what you think about the new and improved VR controllers Valve is working on!