We have to stop associating all VR with motion controls...

@ThreeDeeVision - Your avatar has blinders and you tell me to take off mine... cute.

I specifically said in my reply to cyber that I do not feel that touch controllers signify any sense of true/realistic immersion. I firmly believe that the brain dictates true/realistic immersion. That is absolutely not the same thing you presented when you said, True VR enthusiasts are looking for more realistic forms of interaction when playing VR games.

Yeah, blinders.

While personally I am ambivalent to motion controllers, especially given the physical limitations of my gaming space, I will say that when I first let my wife and kids experience Oculus Dreamdeck, ALL three of them at some point attempted to reach out and touch something in the virtual environment.

As amusing as I found that experience, it is my main compulsion for making sure I do get the motion controls when they're released

NobodyImportant said:

While personally I am ambivalent to motion controllers, especially given the physical limitations of my gaming space, I will say that when I first let my wife and kids experience Oculus Dreamdeck, ALL three of them at some point attempted to reach out and touch something in the virtual environment.

As amusing as I found that experience, it is my main compulsion for making sure I do get the motion controls when they're released

I plan to obsess over Touch as well; however, it does not mean that the past 2 months of Rifting have been any less immersive.

@Zenbane, it wouldn't be interesting without a couple different points of view, and you have definitely put up some very valid arguments.  But you must admit that discrediting any sort of hand tracking in VR is not only short-sighted, but could be considered detrimental to the progress of the technology as a whole, as the end game is complete immersion.  Drawing these lines in the sand, saying silly things like 'we need to not associate tracked controllers to VR' is not doing any good.  It is a troll through and through and I would like to think Cyber put me here to call out the obvious troll and speak intelligently on the matter because what fun would it be without the other point of view?

The fact of the matter is hand tracking and controller tracking in VR is awesome, and the more tracking and feedback, the merrier.  I want to see what this technology can accomplish, not decide limitations before it has even had the chance to truly evolve.

If my posts appear to be discrediting it then perhaps I am conveying the wrong message during the more heated moments of the exchange. However, the original post by @CrashFu makes it very clear that the issue is about portraying 'tracked controllers' as the sole indicator for "true VR." If we can fast forward a year or 2 when we are all beyond Lighthouse vs Constellation, and tracked controllers, there will be new peripherals and new software/firmware that is taking us all to that next level.

VR is like a drug at this point. I believe that true immersion has already begun with the HMD itself. Everything after that is the icing on the cake. And there's a lot of fk'in cake coming down the pipe :o

The problem with hand controllers is that they're good at some things and really bad at others. In H3VR, for example, the Vive wands work great for pistols, but as soon as you try to use them to hold a rifle in two hands... it's pretty much a disaster. The game can't keep the hands a fixed distance apart as they would be while holding a real rifle, nor prevent you from pushing the stock through your shoulder.

Bows, though, work pretty well, since your hand position can control both power and aim at the same time. But a bow controller would still be much better.

Edit: oh, yeah, the other thing that works well in H3VR are the handles that let you grab the world and move it around. Even though it's kind of odd to stay floating in mid-air when you've used them to climb up a wall and then let go.

@CrashFu Not to discredit your points, because you bring up some very valid questions, but have you had any experience with either touch or the vive motion controls yet? (legitimately curious what perspective you are coming from)

personally I used to think it would be a gimmick and would go exactly the same way as the Wii did, but once I actually started seeing its applications and got to use and experience the tech I changed my mind.Very different then the half realized motion controls of the wii. 

In any case while I definitely love the new motion controls and personally tend to prefer the experiences they make possible, I think each peripheral has its place.As people have pointed out, there are games that work better on a controller, and would not transition to motion controls well. Games like Luckys or Eve. There are also games for which the opposite is true, The Climb is the biggest example of a game that needs motion controls to live up to its true potential. (much in the same way E:D needs a hotas or it just isn't as good)

That being said, Not many question using a gamepad for 3rd person VR, or a Hotas for a space sim, or a wheel/pedals for a racing game. Why is there such a big issue about using motion controls for first person experiences?  The right tool for the right job in my opinion.

I also think there should be more innovation in this brand new field. Even if it doesn't work, better to try and find out why then to not try at all. The HMDs themselves are such products. It very well could have gone the same way it went back in the 90s, and people could very well have said, "why bother? its just strapping a screen to your head - just stick to 2d gaming." and then we wouldn't have all this awesome shit right now. 

@JED44  -  I haven't tried the Vivemotes or Touch yet.  I had a Wii back in the day (extremely primitive compared to modern tech, I know) so Leap Motion would be the most modern motion controls I've tried, and I found that novel and really cool in AltSpace, but it didn't make me swear off gamepad gaming.

@ Assorted other people - 

I think the nature of this debate seems to have shifted somewhere along the halfway point.

My plea was to appreciate non-motion-control VR games (like the wonderful titles Oculus Studios has already provided for us?) AS MUCH as motion-control games,  and  stop spreading this message that VR without motion controls isn't VR or that it isn't worth playing at all.   Seeing as that kind of mentality is currently driving a lot of people away from the Oculus platform, I don't think forum moderators or community representatives should be touting it.. *ahem*

My argument was that motion controls in all past scenarios have been called revolutionary and game-changing by the people who adopt them when they came out, only for those same people to get bored of them after a short period of time.  The Vive pretty much JUST launched to the general public, so we're still in the early "This gimmick is brand new so everything related to it automatically impresses me!" stage.  Like when people got their Wiis and thought Wii Sports was the coolest thing ever made.  Hard to believe such primitive motion control tech had people that awed now, but back then the Wii was as sensational as the Vive is now. Probably more-so, since a Wii only cost, what, $300 at launch?

Despite that, I don't think motion controls DEFINITELY don't have a future, just that they RISK going that route if lazy developers keep using the novelty of motion controls as a ticket to sell games that are completely boring and lacking in depth.  Y'know, like uncreative shooting galleries and physics toyboxes?  When motion controls are new and exciting to you, IE  novel, ANY game that features them is going to be like what Wii Sports was to people when the Wii came out.  But after your tenth completely uninspired shooting gallery or direction-less physics toybox in a row, you're just going to be bored and want some real games to play. 

If we get a steady supply of really GOOD, well-designed games, that just happen to involve motion controls, then maybe people won't get completely burnt out on them.  And I'll be happy, because when I get my Touch controllers I want to have really interesting things to play with them, not just boring toyboxes and monotonous shooting galleries.

And even if we DO get first person motion controlled VR games that are really fricken' awesome, Non-motion-control VR games are STILL VR games.  3rd person VR games are STILL VR games. VR games where the protagonist doesn't look and talk and move exactly as you do  (or consist of two disembodied gloves and an invisible camera floating in space) are STILL VR games...  if someone can't get immersed in the world of those games because it doesn't conform to an extremely limiting set of design criteria, that's a personal problem. 

Immersion isn't about thinking the protagonist is actually you or being able to knock loose physics objects around by swinging a plastic stick through a comparable point in real space or any other augmented reality gimmicks.  Immersion is about feeling like the world you're visiting is 'real', even if it looks like a cartoon or an impossible alien landscape. I've felt 10x more immersed just standing there in Dream Deck than I have swatting boxes around in the Leap Motion tech demo.

So I repeat, motion controls are really cool and I look forward to getting my own set of Touch controllers, but they aren't going to DEFINE what all VR is, and they aren't going to replace other interface methods, ever.  Perpetuating the idea that they're CRUCIAL just harms the Oculus platform until Touch comes out (like, hello, that's why the Vive fanboys scream this shit from the rooftops on every social media outlet they have access to?) and it leads to a LOT of people not understanding what VR is really about and unable to imagine anything more sensational than throwing a ball across a ten-foot room.

Folks with steering wheel and HOTAS setups already know how little tracked-controllers impact immersion. It is always going to be about the brain, not the physical body, when it comes to VR. There is definitely a market for moving towards getting our bodies recognized in the virtual space we occupy; but as advancement continue along the Immersion plateau, we will continue to see innovation that incorporates the power of the human mind - not its physical vessel limitations. At least imo.

@crashfu There is a line in your comment that stuck out to me that I think a lot of people are having a hard time grasping. 

CrashFu said:

Despite that, I don't think motion controls DEFINITELY don't have a future, just that they RISK going that route if lazy developers keep using the novelty of motion controls as a ticket to sell games that are completely boring and lacking in depth.  Y'know, like uncreative shooting galleries and physics toyboxes?  When motion controls are new and exciting to you, IE  novel, ANY game that features them is going to be like what Wii Sports was to people when the Wii came out.  But after your tenth completely uninspired shooting gallery or direction-less physics toybox in a row, you're just going to be bored and want some real games to play. 

What I think most people don't realize about VR is that, 100% NEW games are being developed for VR, there is no REAL game anymore when you are in VR. People think VR needs to have games similar to the big AAA titles that we gamers are used to from the past on our hefty gaming PCs and Consoles. But the truth is, VR is a way of transporting you into a Virtual Enviroment, where you believe you are there! Now, when you are there, what is it that is FUN, EXCITING to do?! And this is where the content needs to be created from the ground up. 

Traditional games never were designed to make you feel presence, and trick you into believing you were actually in that world. They made you interested in solving the puzzles, beating the quests, leveling up, but you never just sit there and naturally FEEL like you are in the GAME and start using real life movement skills in the game. 

The problem with using the history of motion controls with the Wii is that the Wii delivered the same 2D experience on a TV that the Xbox 360/PS3 did, except, you had a different input device, and fun, novel motion controller, that had very little accuracy. Yes the Wii was fun, but at all times people knew how limited it's functionality was. People quickly realized it was not 1:1 tracking, and that lead to the quick loss of interest because 99% of the content was the same repetitive crap: swing, shake, push, pull, mechanics, but it never made you feel as if you were truly performing those actions, rather just triggering the response.

Now, in VR with motion controls, it finally allows motion controls on a 1:1 level, of being limitless. Meaning, it is so accurate, that just a slight shift of a swing, shake, push, pull in the game will respond differently every time! This is where the HUGE EXCITEMENT begins, because now, games can actually be developed to take advantage of this 1:1 tracking technology. Like my previous comment, I brought up how awesome, and realistic Ping Pong is in VR, because it plays very close to real ping pong, the accuracy is insane! When you bring in this level of tracking accuracy we can now start making new digital games that we never could before, that will be exciting in a whole new way. Most games for VR that use tracked controls need your REAL skills to work. No more just how fast can you press, A-B-X and analog left, up. Now you need to use your whole body's physical talents to achieve high scores, or to just BEAT the game. In the end, VR is going to attract a different crowd of people. And I have feeling there are going to be some classic gamers that want to be in VR and game, but just really don't like it...and will stick to their current, traditional gaming methods.