Dear Oculus Quest and Quest 2 software development team. I am writing in behalf of all left handed VR players who have this device. The curr
Dear Oculus Quest and Quest 2 software development team. I am writing in behalf of all left handed VR players who have this device. The current state of VR games for left handed players is very inequitable and can be very frustrating. Games are very often not designed with left handedness inclusion in mind.
Prominent examples currently include Resident Evil 4 and The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners. Both games claim they have a left handed mode to support left handed players at but these modes are half measures and not true left handed support. Left handed mode in these and other games often simply switch the position of player relative object on ones character and/or allows for increased object interaction with ones left hand.
However, neither of these games take into consideration the balance of actions controlled by button and joystick use in addition to control tracking controls. This ends up giving left handed players a very asymmetric control scheme that is frustrating to use. For instance in Resident Evil 4 and many other games by default movement is controlled with the left handed joy stick. For right handed players this is effective as you use your dominant hand for main weapon motion controls and you non dominant hand is free to control movement. For left handed players however since these controls are not reversed they are forced to use their left hand for both main object motion control AND player movement on their main hand joy stick.
Luckily a simple solution for left handed players does exist. A simple implementation of the option for system wide controller button mirroring would solve all of these problems. If all controller input (aside from position tracking) from the left hand were treated as right hand inputs, and all from the right hand treated as left hand inputs.
E. G.
A <-> X
B <-> Y
R Joy <-> L Joy
R Trigger <-> L Trigger
R Grip <-> L Grip
Another common preference for left handed users would be to swap only joystick control.
Then left handed players would experience the same exact same equitable allocation of game actions between their dominant and non dominant hand as right handed players. Implementation of this at the Oculus system level would stop the frustration of having to "test" every game one wants to buy for left handed compatibility.
I have spoken with customer support previously about this issue and was forwarded to individual game developers' contact information. Starting the same conversation with every game developer who releases content for the Oculus Quest and Quest 2 system in untenable and exhausting. Please consider a global control mirroring solution as suggested above.
Sincerely a left handed player who is trying to fall in love with VR but is constantly frustrated by a lack of understanding in the right handed game development community.
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Meljay Clapp commented
As a gamer that grew up playing games right handed, I need my movement to be on the left stick and visual on the right. Just swapping the visual and movement is not left handed. I want the option to keep movement and visuals as they are and only set the CHARACTER to be left handed. I think this should be a normal option in all VR games. There are games that I have played that I absolutely LOVE that become unplayable because my only option for being left handed is to just reverse controls. Please make a setting for left hand dominant, right hand movement playing!
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Fiachra Coakley
commented
This is so true
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Bernd Meier commented
This is my biggest critique on the game, I actually can't believe you can't switch movement to your off hand. I came from Half Life Alyx being used to this type of movement and now it's very hard to do it the right handed way
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Harry Tom
commented
It sad, that we lefty's still have to deal with this problem
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Ian Fraser commented
I fully agree, this is why I love Steam, you can fully customise your controller to ridiculous levels of personalisation.
And considering this is an Oculus Exclusive it’s very disappointing, but not unexpected. I fail to see how it’s so hard to allow people to natively change their input through the Oculus OS itself. (Maybe in the beta tab or something)
I will not be purchasing any software from oculus until this is fully resolved, and I will be sticking with steams fully supported controller customisation and community set ups.
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James W
commented
As a general rule I like movement on the left stick because this is how I've gamed for the last 30 years but I can see the logic for switching it.
What we need is options. I know how much work implementing accessibility features can be for small teams or solo devs so OS controller config seems like the best solution. The config should have global settings as well as individual app settings on top and ideally be accessible without quitting out of apps.
While they're at it they should let us adjust the stick's dead zone too!
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Zachary W Hoeffner commented
Bottom line give us the option to swap buttons and joysticks, just joysticks, or just buttons and that should cover almost all preferences
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Side Quest commented
Stormland and Defector have the same issues.
How can you pretend to be a leader in the consumer VR industry while having little to non existant support for left handed people ?
Hello Mark, we exist ! -
Che Freistadt commented
As a leftie, I prefer my movement on the left stick. I just want my holster swapping sides.
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David Bristow
commented
Another lefty here and agree we should not be expected to accept controls coded solely for right handed users. Whilst I appreciate we are a minority, that should not stop developers making relatively simple control options for the left-handed community.
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Michael Dullweber commented
Very well written and explained. I as a left handed player myself struggle too with every new release that doesn't take left handness in fully consideration. It is exhausting to write every developer where these options are missing and even more frustrating if you don't get a reply by beeing one small user.