Oculus Quest gets update to enable tracking of hands

Oculus will release an update to its Quest VR goggles on Tuesday, removing the hand-tracking feature from the Experimental Features section. It will then become a widely available feature and several apps that take advantage of it will be released this month.

On a developer page, Oculus says it will make update v17 available for the Quest starting Tuesday. With that, tracking the user’s hands gets a general release; the feature had been available since December, but that was limited to the central menu and some built-in apps. The controllers of the Oculus Quest still remain the primary mode of operation; Hand tracking should be seen primarily as a bonus.

The update also removes the preview status of the associated SDK, allowing developers to build the feature into apps and games. Beginning May 28, Oculus will begin accepting submissions for hand-tracked apps. Later this month, the apps Elixir, The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets, and Walts of the Wizard, among others, will be available in the Oculus Store, including an update to support hand tracking. That also applies to two animated VR movies, namely Gloomy Eyes and The Line.

The Oculus Quest has been around for nearly a year now, and the company behind the VR headset says users have spent more than $100 million on content for the Quest.