Developers Finally Get Their Hands on Valve’s Knuckles DV Controller

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We’ve covered several iterations of the Valve Knuckles controller, culminating in the EV3 model they documented not too long ago. Now, after many iterations and feedback from the community, Valve is shipping a developer version of the Knuckles, known a the DV, representing the culmination of all that R&D.

The Hot Newness

So what has been changed in the new Knuckles DV? The list is quite a long one, but some changes do stand out more than others.

There have been quite a few ergonomic updates as is to be expected. Notably, the capacitive sensors have been moved about. This is in an effort to support more hand sizes. It seems that some developers had either very small or very large hands.

It also seems that some people have too much strength, since the triggers have once again been made stronger, with more clicky feedback to boot. The all important straps all also stronger, which hopefully means your screen and other valuables will be spared a flying motion controller.

The firmware has also received plenty of quality of life improvements. They’ve made fast charging better and addressed issues where the controllers didn’t pair properly.

For the rest, there’s a lot of polishing. Fit and finish has been made better and small details such as the amount of LED light leakage. So things look to be shaping up quickly.

Great Expectations

It would be no exaggeration to day that the VR community are very much looking forward to seeing the final consumer version of the Knuckles controllers. Valve being Valve, they haven’t given any indication of when they plan to finalize the Knuckles, but given that these are the first controllers not to carry the “EV” moniker. Make of that what you will, but it clearly shows that some fundamental milestone has been reached in the development of Knuckles.

Given how much work has gone into perfecting the Knuckles design we would be surprised if the production version isn’t at least announced in 2019. For now we can only wait with bated breath.

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