Best controllers for VR shooters / VR Chat?

[Damian]

Hi there,
I got myself a VR headset Pimax Crystal and two 2.0 Valve base stations.

I would like to try some other tracking stuff to fool around in VR chat and maybe play some VR shooters.

All I know are the Valve Index controllers... :/

If you have tested multiple ones let me know the differences, thanks

[Gracey Face]

The index controllers are the best off the shelf ones at the moment. Probably will be for a while, as they are a good design (if fragile). Every other controller has fewer inputs and generally is less precise.

I am curious why you're looking to replace them. Are you having tracking issues?

[Damian]

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

The index controllers are the best off the shelf ones at the moment. Probably will be for a while, as they are a good design (if fragile). Every other controller has fewer inputs and generally is less precise.

I am curious why you're looking to replace them. Are you having tracking issues?

Don't take it the wrong way, I'm not native Englsh speaker and I wonder what I wrote that confused you that you think I have a controller. To make it clear and less confusing from what I wrote above, I don't have any controllers, I bought the Pimax Crystal and Base stations separate, not as a bundle. I mainly bought it for Sim Racing as I have a Sim Rig and it's fun and I wonder if vrChat would be fun :)

What scares me a little is that I've seen the HTC trackers that cost 150$ a piece and I need elbows, knees and feet...

[Gracey Face]

Originally posted by Damian:

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

The index controllers are the best off the shelf ones at the moment. Probably will be for a while, as they are a good design (if fragile). Every other controller has fewer inputs and generally is less precise.

I am curious why you're looking to replace them. Are you having tracking issues?

Don't take it the wrong way, I'm not native Englsh speaker and I wonder what I wrote that confused you that you think I have a controller. To make it clear and less confusing from what I wrote above, I don't have any controllers, I bought the Pimax Crystal and Base stations separate, not as a bundle. I mainly bought it for Sim Racing as I have a Sim Rig and it's fun and I wonder if vrChat would be fun :)

What scares me a little is that I've seen the HTC trackers that cost 150$ a piece and I need elbows, knees and feet...

"All I know are the index controllers" implies you have intimate knowledge of them through use. It's just a little oddity of English, when you say something like you did if you put "know" it implies intimate familiarity, if you say "know about" it implies a high level of familiarity but not intimate, if you say "know of" it means lower level of familiarity and potentially no familiarity and when you say "have heard about" it means you have no personal familiarity.

But it's not really your fault and could have been interpreted as you intended by another person.

Anyway if you don't have controllers but you do have base stations and a crystal with the base station front plate a pair of index controllers is your best bet. Just be gentle with them as they're fragile. As for the vive trackers, they're only worth buying if you're going to be doing something like VR chat and even then you don't really need them they're only so you can have full body tracking and do silly things to try to stand out. And you only need feet and a waist tracker, if you have both of those any game with body tracking will be able to figure out the positions of the rest of your body since you'll have head (headset), hands (controllers), feet (trackers) and direction that your body is facing+midsection (belt tracker).

[Damian]

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

Originally posted by Damian:

Don't take it the wrong way, I'm not native Englsh speaker and I wonder what I wrote that confused you that you think I have a controller. To make it clear and less confusing from what I wrote above, I don't have any controllers, I bought the Pimax Crystal and Base stations separate, not as a bundle. I mainly bought it for Sim Racing as I have a Sim Rig and it's fun and I wonder if vrChat would be fun :)

What scares me a little is that I've seen the HTC trackers that cost 150$ a piece and I need elbows, knees and feet...

"All I know are the index controllers" implies you have intimate knowledge of them through use. It's just a little oddity of English, when you say something like you did if you put "know" it implies intimate familiarity, if you say "know about" it implies a high level of familiarity but not intimate, if you say "know of" it means lower level of familiarity and potentially no familiarity and when you say "have heard about" it means you have no personal familiarity.

But it's not really your fault and could have been interpreted as you intended by another person.

Anyway if you don't have controllers but you do have base stations and a crystal with the base station front plate a pair of index controllers is your best bet. Just be gentle with them as they're fragile. As for the vive trackers, they're only worth buying if you're going to be doing something like VR chat and even then you don't really need them they're only so you can have full body tracking and do silly things to try to stand out. And you only need feet and a waist tracker, if you have both of those any game with body tracking will be able to figure out the positions of the rest of your body since you'll have head (headset), hands (controllers), feet (trackers) and direction that your body is facing+midsection (belt tracker).

Oh my god thank you for being so nice and explaining both things.

[Gracey Face]

If you want cheap the only option I can think of is the original vive controller. You can get working vive controllers second hand from £25 (since people will often try to upgrade to knuckles), or can buy them brand new for £90-120 depending on what store and what special offers are on at the time, they're £104 direct from vive at the moment in my area for example

I have never heard of any complaints about the vive controllers being fragile personally.

The only other lighthouse controller option I am aware of are the pimax sword controllers and they're expensive and not well received. Also I am not sure if they work with all lighthouse setups either, the vive controllers do though.

Just make sure you buy vive controllers and not vive cosmos controllers, the cosmos are cheaper but only work with the cosmos inside out headset.

[Damian]

I've seen also some Gloves controllers, are they good? They seem nice for "grabbing" things but bad for overall movement because the lack of thumbsticks.

[Gracey Face]

Originally posted by Damian:

I've seen also some Gloves controllers, are they good? They seem nice for "grabbing" things but bad for overall movement because the lack of thumbsticks.

I am personally unaware of any of those that actually went to market beyond the captoglove, which went bankrupt and is now out of production and never worked well.

There's a ton of startups and tech demos and "influencer pre-release samples" of VR gloves, but they never end up making it to market.

Because of a lack of haptic feedback they also end up being bad for grabbing things, as well as bad for general button functionality since you have to map hand gestures to button inputs.


There's also Manus come to think of it, but I have no idea how good they are since they cost several grand for a pair and I have never seen anyone that bought them.

[Damian]

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

Originally posted by Damian:

I've seen also some Gloves controllers, are they good? They seem nice for "grabbing" things but bad for overall movement because the lack of thumbsticks.

I am personally unaware of any of those that actually went to market beyond the captoglove, which went bankrupt and is now out of production and never worked well.

There's a ton of startups and tech demos and "influencer pre-release samples" of VR gloves, but they never end up making it to market.

Because of a lack of haptic feedback they also end up being bad for grabbing things, as well as bad for general button functionality since you have to map hand gestures to button inputs.


There's also Manus come to think of it, but I have no idea how good they are since they cost several grand for a pair and I have never seen anyone that bought them.

If I'm not mistaken, the Valve Index Controllers also detect fingers right?

Is there any difference between new and old Index Controllers? I've seen some older Controllers on ebay.

[Gracey Face]

Originally posted by Damian:

If I'm not mistaken, the Valve Index Controllers also detect fingers right?

Is there any difference between new and old Index Controllers? I've seen some older Controllers on ebay.

No, the index controllers don't track fingers. It's a bit of false marketing. They approximate finger tracking by having a touch pad along the grip, and it guesses what the position of your fingers are by how far up the touchpad it is detecting pressure since your hand kind of "rolls up" when you clench it and vice versa.

It might be hard to picture just from a text description though.

This as long as your hand is the exact right shape and size as the hand the controller was designed for can roughly approximate finger tracking, but it is not as accurate, and if your hand is a different size or you grip the controller slightly differently it no longer works well at all.

Functional differences no, though there's some construction differences internally (later revisions are more sturdy, supposedly). I'd be hesitant buying a pair of knuckles off of ebay because people tend to chuck them on ebay once they stop working properly, but you could get lucky. Index controllers due to how fragile they are are something I'd never buy second hand myself as I don't have the knowhow to repair them. If you can repair them though it's a decent purchase.