Oculus described Toybox as their internal test bed for the company’s ‘Touch’ motion input controllers. The company is polishing up the experience to give players a sandbox environment that shows off both multiplayer VR and the capability of the Touch controllers. A new video from Oculus gives us a glimpse inside of Toybox.
Oculus first showed off Toybox with their Touch controllers at E3 2015 where the combination of multiplayer social interaction and intuitive motion input wowed those lucky enough to try it. At the time the company wasn’t releasing any official footage of the experience.
See Also: Hands-on – Oculus Touch is an Elegant Extension of your Hand for Touching Virtual Worlds
At the company’s second annual Connect developer conference, Oculus ran Touch demos through the night, allowing a much larger swath of developers to see Toybox and others Touch experiences.
Inside Toybox, players see one another as Rift-wearing blue, body-less avatars that hover over virtual table tops piled high with a myriad objects, all there to demonstrate to you, the user, the joy of accurate, naturalistic virtual reality input.
However, Toybox is much more than a mere technical showcase for Oculus’ excellent proprietary input devices, it goes a long way to counterpoint the widely held opinion that virtual reality is a solitary, isolating experience – one in which the player shuts themselves off from the real world and its inhabitants. In Toybox, with voice comms in place, the enjoyment of this virtual playground is enhanced immeasurably by the presence of your Oculus Touch wielding companion.
Up to now, Oculus have been extremely shy about journalists capturing footage of the ‘programmer art’ filled demonstration. But now, two videos direct from Oculus not only demonstrate what Toybox looks like, they allow you to see how real world actions are interpreted by Oculus Touch.
Two-handed interactions are fluid and intuitive and Touch’s unique gesture sensing features are on show here, allowing in-game hands to represent articulation in both thumb and forefinger. And as trivial as that may sound, as you can see from the footage, seeing those gestures in VR not only enhance communication, they also elevate the sense of shared presence in the virtual world, providing subtle, humanistic cues pulling you into the world.
Oculus Touch will ship separately from the Rift, the latter shipping in Q1 2016 with the former following later in Q2. Emphasis on Oculus Touch and its capabilities was, predictably, very heavy at Oculus’ recent developer conference Connect, with new games from Oculus Studios and Epic demonstrating the unique experience dedicated VR input devices can provide.