Quest 2’s new Hand Tracking 2.0 mode brings some significant improvements to using your hands without a controller.
Meta said its researchers and engineers “have developed a new method of applying deep learning to better understand hand pose when the device’s camera can’t see the entire hand or when the hand is moving quickly,” describing the results as “Step-by-step feature improvements to tracking continuity”.
The new mode apparently handles rapid movement of your hand, one hand covering the other, and even your hand touching — scenarios that previously caused tracking to be temporarily interrupted. This should make hand tracking more practical and support new actions like clapping and counting fingers.
Currently, Hand Tracking 2.0 is an optional developer side upgrade, so you’ll need to wait for the app to release an update to support it to see these improvements. However, later this year, Hand Tracking 2.0 will be the default.
The new mode replaces the high-frequency hand tracking mode released last year. The mode is also a developer’s choice, and also improves fast hand movements — as well as reducing latency — but it comes with the trade-off of slightly increasing hand shake and limiting the maximum CPU and GPU clock speeds available to apps. Meta claims that Hand Tracking 2.0 offers fast-moving benefits like high frequencies, but runs at the default frequency, so there are no tradeoffs.
We haven’t tried hand tracking 2.0 yet, but early developers using it said via Meta:
“Previously, Cubism’s hand tracking relied on smoothing input of hand data to produce a stable input method. Additionally, players need to be taught not to cross their hands, as this can negatively impact tracking. It’s all improved with the latest hand tracking – enough for me to turn off hand smoothing by default.” – Thomas Van Bouwel, Cubist developer
“This update to hand tracking is a big step towards natural and intuitive hand interaction. With this major improvement, we hope more people will discover the impact of hand tracking on immersive experiences.” – Hand Physics Laboratory
“Although we managed to achieve very reliable and accurate gameplay with the old version of hand tracking, we had to put some limitations on our gameplay. This is done to provide a smooth experience that is not interrupted by any issues that this new technology might encounter from time to time. In the latest update, hand tracking is so accurate and responsive that we can include all the benefits we couldn’t offer before: rapid changes in finger position, and an increased, more realistic note count that makes songs feel more real.” – Unplugged: Air Guitar
“Our workouts require a lot of quick punches, and hand tracking has to keep up with the strict pace. We’re very pleased with this latest update and excited about the general direction of hand tracking on the Quest platform.” – Liteboxer
Unity and Unreal Engine SDK updates should be made available to other developers in the coming days.
