Skip to main content

Oculus Quest VR adds hand tracking for one-year anniversary

Oculus Quest owners are going to be able to do a lot more with their hands in the coming months.

The Facebook-owned VR company announced Monday, May 18 that hand tracking on Quest will go from an experimental feature to general release this week.

Recommended Videos

The first third-party games allowing players to interact with virtual worlds without using controllers will be in stores starting May 28.

It’s a big leap forward to Oculus, which is celebrating the one-year anniversary of the Quest. By incorporating the use of real hands into games, VR becomes more accessible to a wider group of users, who may be intimidated by current controllers.

Four games (all created by Oculus) currently utilize hand tracking in its experimental phase and are available now in the Oculus Store.

To date, Quest owners have spend $100 million on VR content for the system. More than 20 games have made more than $1 million each and over 10 have topped $2 million in revenues on Quest.

While Oculus did not give out sales numbers, one of the flagship games for the system has been Beat Saber. To keep that momentum going, the developers of that game announced plans to launch 20 new beatmaps on May 25 in a free update — 10 with 360-degree support and 10 with one-saber support.

Tracks will include Green Day’s American Idiot”and Timbaland’s While We’re Young.

Chris Morris
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Chris Morris has covered consumer technology and the video game industry since 1996, offering analysis of news and trends and…
A free update just made the Quest 3 way better
First Encounter is the perfect introduction to mixed reality on Quest 3.

The Meta Quest 3 was already one of the best VR headsets for mixed reality, while keeping costs affordable. Soon Quest 3 owners will see a big upgrade that removes the distortion that sometimes broke the immersive feeling, simply by updating their headsets.

Meta has announced the v66 software update that, among many things, comes with improvements to the Quest 3's passthrough cameras. Since the Quest 3’s passthrough cameras are located a couple of inches in front of your eyes, the headset must adjust the image to match your true perspective. Otherwise, everything would seem slightly zoomed in. Distant objects are easy, but nearby hands hide a portion of the background, presenting a challenge.

Read more
The creator of the Oculus Rift is working on a mysterious new VR headset
Oculus Rift CV1

If you don’t recognize the name Oculus, it’s the company that kicked off the modern VR era. Facebook (now Meta) was so impressed by the Oculus Rift developer kit and sudden revival of interest in VR that it acquired the company in 2014. Now Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is back with plans for another VR headset.

While Luckey shared no specific details or even the name of the device, the announcement will no doubt create a buzz in the industry. The X (formerly Twitter) post came as a reply to VR analyst Brad Lynch’s reaction to Luckey’s X post about the ModRetro Chromatic, an upgraded reinterpretation of the wildly popular GameBoy Color handheld console.

Read more
The Meta Quest 3 will get an exciting new type of app
A Windows app extends into 3D space via a Meta Quest 3 VR headset.

A Windows app extends into 3D space via a Meta Quest 3 VR headset. Microsoft

At Build 2024, Microsoft announced it partnered with Meta to extend Windows apps into 3D space with the help of a Quest VR headset. When working on physical objects, it’s important to have spatial awareness of components.

Read more