Hand tracking released on Oculus Quest this week

The Oculus Quest standalone VR headset was first released earlier this year, and now Oculus has announced the arrival of an early consumer feature starting this week, bringing hand tracking to the device.

"From gesturing and communicating with others to picking up and manipulating objects, our hands play an important role in how we interact with the world—and they're key to unlocking the feeling of true presence in a virtual space. We first brought your hands into VR with Oculus Touch controllers, so you could engage in VR in a more natural way. Now, we're taking the next step with hand tracking on Oculus Quest—letting you interact in VR without controllers, using your real hands," the announcement reads.

This is coming as a software development kit (SDK) for developers as of next week, and you can turn on hand tracking using the Experimental Features menu to try it out, using your hands to navigate menus, Library, Store, and more. You can even select your floor height for a stationary Guardian boundary without controllers.

"We'll continue to add new features and functionality to improve the experience of hand tracking on Quest in 2020," Oculus adds.

With the SDK coming out, developers can now make interactions in Quest apps using just the player's hand, opening doorways for new experiences without controllers for the first time as well. Oculus also hopes that this makes VR "more approachable for newcomers to try by removing the need to learn controller functions".

Are you pleased to see this feature come in?