Hello, thanks for your response. I did download UE 4.27, and the locked 4.27 example branch, after writing my comment and have just been testing it out - it works great, the finger tracking works, the physics grasping hand is really cool, and the controls do function.
I did reach a similar conclusion with UE 4 vs. 5 after seeing that Nanite and Lumen are incompatible with VR, seems UE 4.27 is not really that different from UE 5.0.3 when it comes to VR, as you say.
I look forward to exploring more of the template!