Hand Tracking on the Oculus Quest Feels Pretty Magical

The Oculus Rift , Facebook ’s cord - free VR headset that jump at just $ 400 , is get acouple of new features over the next year . I had the opportunity to jibe out what might be the coolest one : hand trailing .

Mark Zuckerberg surprised the assorted developers and journalists during the Oculus Connect 6 Day One Keynote when he announce unexampled update to its standalone VR headset , the Oculus Quest . The first update will allow you to tether the Quest to a PC and utilize it as you would it PC - focused sib , the identically priced Rift S. But the ice chest update is paw trailing , which is slate to be publish in 2020 .

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mitt tracking typically ask pot of cameras and or motion sensors and it can be unwieldy or affect the functioning on boring devices . optic and Facebook have n’t given all the particular of how it function on the Quest but we know it uses the 4 photographic camera on the Oculus Quest to take your custody without any extra ironware .

Facebook only had two demonstration available , and unfortunately , they would n’t take into account me to capture footage of what I was seeing inside the demo so you ’ll have to use your imagination . The first demonstration had me working to track down body of water wetting in a household , while the second cast me as a enchantress ’s apprentice . In both I could move around and interact with the environment using my hands .

Surprisingly there was no mussy calibration required so my hands could be dog inside the demos . I simply slipped on the Quest and looked down and there were all ten fingers move in the practical world in what appeared to be the exact same elbow room they feel like they were moving in the existent one . There was n’t any lag or hiccups either . It run much still than expected ( or than VR demos typically do ) .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

deal trailing might feel like the holy grail , but as Facebook noted in its two - hr keynote yesterday , it ’s not just the hands that need to be tracked in a virtual world if we want it to feel fitly immersive . Every other inch of your body will need to be tracked . You ’ll take to be capable to look down and see your feet , or depend behind you and see your stub . Otherwise , you ’ll be a terrific avatar from the virtual playground , Horizons , Facebook usher off yesterday .

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Facebook teased technology that could one day do that ( about one hour and 48 minutes into the keynote ) , but it ’s unbelievable that it will happen on the Quest , which utilize an already aging Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor . It ’s incredible what the Quest can do , but there will likely be limit the older it gets .

William Duplessie

The Quest launched earlier this year for $ 400 and in yesterday ’s tonic , Facebook lay claim it nearly 20 - percentage of the salesin the Oculus storewere due to it . It ’s reasonably successful , and the summation of personal computer tethering this year and mitt tracking next yr could succeeding proof it to the point that people wo n’t mind its limitations .

You ca n’t see the substantial world using a passthrough mode with the Quest though . That ’s a Rift S only ability . The Rift S relies on a personal computer too , which can be upgrade by the user . finally , the Quest ’s processor and storage limitations ( there ’s only a 64 GB and 128 GB selection ) will mean it will necessitate replacing .

Still , the Rift S wo n’t get script trailing and it has a depressed solvent display than the Quest . So if you ’re looking to taste the time to come of VR this year or next , the Quest might not be a bad choice . Merely slipping a headset over your oculus and then immediately having even a small part of your body transport into a practical world is a magic enough experience it ’d be hard not to want to judge it out .

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