cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Touch vs Index controllers and why I prefer Touch

MowTin
Expert Trustee
When I first saw the knuckles/index controllers being demoed, I was wowed by them and couldn't wait to get my hands on them. Now that I have them, I think I prefer Touch and I'll explain why...

The Thumbsticks


1. Notice how the index is dimpled. You have a much better tactile feel and grip for your thumb. Both XBox One and PS4 controllers have this. Why mess with perfection?

2. With Touch your last two fingers, pinky and ring finger, both grip the end of the controller as you move the thumbstick giving you better leverage and control. For the Index, griping is grabbing so can't grab.

The buttons

1. Notice how the Touch has four distinctly labeled buttons A, B, Y, X just like the XBox controller or PS4 controller using symbols. Index has A, B for both. They can be mapped differently but in games, you can't get a convenient Y or X indicator for what button you need to press. 

Grabbing

1. On Touch, grab is a trigger type button with travel. You clearly feel it and know how much travel you're applying. The Index depends on pressure. If you squeeze it hard enough you'll feel some click like feedback. This creates ambiguity when holding something. If the pressure your applying drops below some threshold, you drop what you're holding. I find that I grab things I didn't intend to grab and drop things that I didn't intend to drop. 

Tracking your ring and index finger serves very little practical use in games. Game makers aren't going to want to use a feature that's exclusive to the Index. And it's hard to imagine what you would really do with those fingers in a game that would be meaningful. 

Strap

1. You have the extra hassle of slipping your hands into the traps and out of the straps. It's not a huge hassle but it feels like taking gloves off one at a time versus just putting the controller down. 

2. Because your hands are strapped in, you can't slide your thumb up and down as easily as you can with touch. 

Charging

When I finish playing with my Index I have to remember to plug the controllers in to charge. With Touch I use rechargeable batteries and I can always just swap out batteries when they get low. It takes about 3 hours to charge the Index controllers. But that's a matter of preference. Some people prefer the ps4 controllers vs xbox battery swap. 

Price

1. We all smash our controller onto the wall or a desk once in a while. So, it's better if they're cheaper to replace if you break them.

The bottom line is while they look better and have this cool looking finger tracking feature, they're not functionally better yet cost much more. And for some crazy reason, they abandoned controller conventions that have been around for decades. 

I'm not even going to discuss how bad the trackpad/d-pad thingy is because Touch doesn't have one so overall it's an advantage for the index. You can press it like a button and use it like the d-pad in the xbox and ps4 controllers. 

It may seem like I'm trashing the Index controllers but I'm not. They're a huge improvement over wands and finger tracking is cool. 
 



i7 9700k 3090 rtx   CV1, Rift-S, Index, G2
159 REPLIES 159

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

Wildt said:



 Valves attitude so far is concerning though.


Their "it's by design" response was flippin' embarrasing imo. I don't remember owning a gamepad in the last 5 years that wasn't clickable in all directions. 



Fully agree - Valve needs to fix this for those who experience even the slightest issue. Seems to primarily be when you press down the thumbstick and then choose a direction (usually only one direction may not register correctly). Usually you don't push down the thumbstick to move in games with full locomotion, but it seems Pavlov and Arizona Sunshine do (the latter in order to sprint). You may also press down the thumbstick to teleport in some games - but usually that function on the Knuckles is moved to the pressure sensitive trackpad, which may to some degree explain why Valve may have overlooked the thumbstick issue, although Valve of course still needs to fix the issue. 

In SteamVR there's a controller overview, and you can see all buttons register, when you push them - so it's extremely easy to test if Knuckles are working 100% or not. 

If you play games, where you need to press the thumbstick down + to add a direction when pressed down (Knuckles work fine when pressing the thumbstick down - it's when you press down + select a direction that the direction may not register, because the rod inside the thumbstick may be too short when the thumbstick is tilted), of course this may be a real issue. If you don't, you may never notice any problems with Knuckles. 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

jab
Rising Star
No arguing that the knuckles have a problem with the thumbstick, and that it should be fixed.
But people are making it out to be a much bigger problem then it really is. If not being able to sprint in all direction in two games(?) is the biggest problem there is with the Index, I'll take that any day over all the current Rift-S problems.

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

jab said:

No arguing that the knuckles have a problem with the thumbstick, and that it should be fixed.
But people are making it out to be a much bigger problem then it really is. If not being able to sprint in all direction in two games(?) is the biggest problem there is with the Index, I'll take that any day over all the current Rift-S problems.



That's very close to my opinion. Not buying Index because of the risk of some rare movements not being registered correctly may - in my humble opinion - correspond to not buying the USS Enterprise because the small antenna 512B may not work correctly. Now, you may need that antenna to detect cloaked alien spaceships, and that could be really important depending on where you want to travel - but for many captains it really shouldn't keep them from visiting the most amazing worlds they've ever seen. 

Billedresultat for hello worlds valve index

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

jab said:

No arguing that the knuckles have a problem with the thumbstick, and that it should be fixed.
But people are making it out to be a much bigger problem then it really is. If not being able to sprint in all direction in two games(?) is the biggest problem there is with the Index, I'll take that any day over all the current Rift-S problems.



Rift-S is an HMD and Knuckles are hand-controllers. You're comparing apples and oranges. Not to mention that you may also be making the Rift-S problems out to be much bigger than they really are.

Index has more problems than just the clicking issue. And it's easy for you to say all of that anyway when you haven't actually spent the $270 on hand-controllers that took 3 years to develop. The Rift-S didn't take 3 years and it was made by Lenova. Whereas Valve did R&D on Knuckles for 3 years straight and still couldn't get it right. So if you compare these products properly, it is quite the embarrassment.


RuneSR2 said:
Seems to primarily be when you press down the thumbstick and then
choose a direction (usually only one direction may not register
correctly).

If that's true then there's more than one problem. What people are reporting is that... you choose a direction first, and then clicking becomes a problem.


RuneSR2 said:
Usually you don't push down the thumbstick to move in games with full locomotion

And this is where I see your bias come in. There are games where you need to push down on the Thumbstick while moving in order to do things like Sprint. Such as with SkyrimVR. And you know this, yet you intentionally say things like this to pretend that there is no real problem. This is just another example of where your analysis comes off intentionally dishonest.

Luciferous
Consultant

True not many games use this method (don't like it personally and change it where possible)  but considering the cost, I would want the issue resolved before purchasing especially as not all games allow remapping. I would also feel I always had a defective unit otherwise.

I think we should avoid getting personal though. Calling people liars is not friendly or helpful for discussions.

Zenbane
MVP
MVP


I think we should avoid getting personal though. Calling people liars is not friendly or helpful for discussions.



I never used the word "liar" at all. I think we should avoid getting personal by accusing people of things that they did not say.

Here's what I actually said:
"This is just another example of where your analysis comes off intentionally dishonest."

The analysis, not the person, "comes off" as being intentionally dishonest. And that is not the first time in this thread that we see this. Earlier Rune tried to claim that Knuckles were cheaper than original Touch, which was a blatant falsehood. And it did seem a bit intentional since Rune went out of his way to make the point using Foreign Currency instead of using U.S. Dollars to compare two products that are made by U.S. companies.

There's more example than that. We see MRTV and other Index owners describing a problem where you can't click down "after" pushing forward on the Index's Thumbstick. But then Rune seems to go out of his way to describe the problem in reverse in order to make it seem as if it's not a real problem:
"Seems to primarily be when you press down the thumbstick and then
choose a direction"

I am not saying Rune is a liar. But we can clearly see that on more than one occasion, he does seem to be going out of his way to alter situations in order to portray a specific type of conclusion.

I wouldn't call it lying. I would call it either an intentional or unintentional fuzzification of the truth.
😉

Wildt
Consultant

RuneSR2 said:


Seems to primarily be when you press down the thumbstick and then choose a direction (usually only one direction may not register correctly). Usually you don't push down the thumbstick to move in games with full locomotion, but it seems Pavlov and Arizona Sunshine do (the latter in order to sprint). . 




Nah, it's the other way around - moving the stick fully to some direction and then pressing it. It's default in quite a lot of stick locomotion games. Just the other day I played Farpoint on PSVR with the aim controller, and I intuitively pressed the stick while walking, and lo and behold, it clicked and I started sprinting just as expected.

Det er en ommer Valve!
PCVR: CV1 || 4 sensors || TPcast wireless adapter || MamutVR Gun stock V3
PSVR: PS4 Pro || Move Controllers || Aim controller
WMR: HP Reverb

Luciferous
Consultant
Don’t remember naming anybody but if you think it applies to you.?

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
Just took a picture of both - because size may really be the biggest difference and maybe sometimes size does matter :blush:

kbtpz9v60f5p.jpg

If you got small hands, although my 11 year old son didn't experience problems, I can't help thinking that Touch might be better. 
To me Knuckles simply are a better fit - the controllers feel like made for real men, lol - and I still can't decide if they feel more like holding guns or swords...

No matter what people prefer I think it's awesome that Valve had the courage to launch the Index and thereby support PCVR.  

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

Wildt said:


RuneSR2 said:


Seems to primarily be when you press down the thumbstick and then choose a direction (usually only one direction may not register correctly). Usually you don't push down the thumbstick to move in games with full locomotion, but it seems Pavlov and Arizona Sunshine do (the latter in order to sprint). . 




Nah, it's the other way around - moving the stick fully to some direction and then pressing it. It's default in quite a lot of stick locomotion games. Just the other day I played Farpoint on PSVR with the aim controller, and I intuitively pressed the stick while walking, and lo and behold, it clicked and I started sprinting just as expected.

Det er en ommer Valve!



Some are worried that Knuckles - even if they work now - may soon develop faults. I'm really not worried - I can just RMA the controller if needed. For now the kids use CV1 + Touch, while I handle the more delicate things, lol. 

Forresten, fik at vide af ungerne, at ComKean er skiftet til Index - men han har et 2080 Ti, man burde nok begynde at lave videofilm, lol - han klager vist ikke over controller-problemer, men jeg har ikke set videoen helt igennem, den er jo lang: 

https://youtu.be/BvXZ-DPuKVQ


Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"