I've worked with cardboard, Gear VR and Oculus Go. Right now I'm focusing on Gear VR because you can start the tour with a tap on the headset (unlike the Go) and the phone can stay in the headset and be charged there. The problem with Gear VR and Go is that you have to display on a browser in the Oculus environment. That can be confusing and allows people to easily break out of the tour, breaking the experience. It also requires more experienced staff to fix any issues. What I really want is something where you put the headset to your face and you are immediately in the tour, and no way to break out -- kiosk mode. I'm exploring if that is possible.

As for "joystick," just use the VR Cursor in the center of the screen to click on hotspots. Works great and no need for an extra piece of kit that can get lost or untethered or mixed up with the wrong headset.

Gear VR requires Samsung phones. I buy older phones that may not be useable as phones, anymore, because they are locked out by the carrier or have something broken that doesn't affect their use in the headset. Much less expensive. Sideload the tour onto the phone (Google it), install a web server and run the tour locally in the Oculus browser. There are threads in this forum giving detailed instructions. No dependence on having a connection, then. And there is no wired connection except for charging.

The Oculus environment is "necessary" to gain access to the headset controls. Soon as you connect the phone to the headset it will download everything over WiFi, including games, browsers, the Oculus store, and other apps. Ideally for us, that would all disappear but we could still have access to all hardware -- kiosk mode.

It is easiest to borrow a Gear VR headset or buy one on eBay for cheap, borrow a Galaxy phone if you don't have one and just see what it is like. Point the Oculus browser to a VR ready tour and just see how it works.