The moment they announced they weren't shipping with touch is the moment they lost the message IMO. I've been reflecting these last few days and what they told us at Steam Dev Days wound up being true - the demo we tried (the "Valve Room") indeed was something we'd have in our homes within 3 years. They did it in 2. Oculus didn't stick to the vision and launched something well behind the vision valve sold me on that day.
The success of the vive is the success of lighthouse. None of this happens if it's not for lighthouse, IMO. They engineered a brilliant solution to what had been a constant problem since the 1980's with incredible elegance and they don't get nearly enough credit for it. Lighthouse, what it is and does conceptually, is an enormous leap forward for technology. They shamed a whole bunch of dedicated research teams IMO.
What's exciting is hearing Alan Yates talk about the other systems they have in R&D, some of which he says are viable. He won't go into detail about how they work, but he leaks their codenames, which are similar to lighthouse (foghorn, for example).
Alan Yates said that, when Oculus sold Mark Zuckerberg on VR, they didn't show him an oculus demo. Rather, they actually demoed for him the Valve Room, and after he purchased Oculus they tried to poach Valve's VR team. Alan Yates said they failed, and that the great majority of the VR team stayed behind at Valve. I suspect that's why valve was able to deliver the system they promised at Dev Days while Oculus was not.