Facebook introduced controllerless hand-tracking in beta on Oculus Quest late last year and it has remained an “experimental” feature ever since. This week the company says Quest hand-tracking will be rolling out as a full-fledged feature, with third-party hand-tracking apps beginning to launch next week.
Since late last year it’s been possible to enable hand-tracking on Quest as an experimental feature. Since then Oculus has been rapidly iterating on the feature and has built it into a few of its first-party applications like Oculus Browser and Oculus TV, but so far third-party applications haven’t been allowed to make use of the feature.
That’s changing this week as Oculus rolls out a Quest update which will see hand-tracking graduate from experimental to full-fledged feature. Along with the hand-tracking update, the first set of third-party apps to use hand-tracking on Quest will launch starting May 28th, including the following:
Elixir: Explore an unstable alchemy lab to obtain new and powerful hands, cast spells, mix potions, and poke a nauseated dragon. All of which will have an – unexpected – effect on the anatomy of your fingers, and it’s nobody’s fault but your own.
The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets: Help your grandfather solve the mystery of the stolen pets by exploring wonderful miniature worlds crafted from the ground up for VR. Every world is unique, full of interactions and colorful life.
Waltz of the Wizard: An experience that lets you feel what it’s like to have magical powers! Combine arcane ingredients into a cauldron, unleashing creative or destructive wizardry upon a fully interactive world designed to feel believable.
Cinematic Narratives Set: Featuring the voice of Colin Farrell, ‘Gloomy Eyes’ tells the story of a zombie kid and a mortal girl who fall in love, forging a deep connection that not even the most powerful man in town can destroy. ‘The Line’ portrays a world of miniatures where routine is paramount and everything is always the same—until it’s not.
As for the Quest hand-tracking feature, we expect it will work similar to how the experimental version does now: if you boot the headset without grabbing your controllers, you can control the interface with your hands but you will be prompted to pick up the controllers if you attempt to launch an application which requires them.
As for hand-tracking on Rift, Oculus hasn’t offered any update since telling us late last year that the company would ‘wait for feedback’ from Quest hand-tracking before deciding if it will bring the feature to Rift.
