Oculus Quest VR adds hand tracking for one-year anniversary

By Chris Morris May 18, 2020

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.

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.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Chris Morris has covered consumer technology and the video game industry since 1996, offering analysis of news and trends and…

Computing

What is screen door effect in VR?

A man stands outside wearing a VR headset holds a mesh screen.

If you're researching VR headsets, you'll probably come across a mention of the screen door effect. Since the display of a VR headset is so close to your eye, it's sometimes possible to see the gaps between pixels, similar to looking through a screen door or the mesh that covers a window to the world beyond.

This visual phenomenon shows up on VR headsets, from the cheapest to the most expensive, and although there's not a clear solution to completely eliminate screen door effect, there are several headsets trying to tackle the problem in different ways.
Packing pixels tighter

Gaming

The Meta Quest Pro and Quest 2 are getting big price cuts this month

A model poses with a Meta Quest Pro over a colorful background.

Meta revealed that it is bringing down the price of some of its most expensive VR headsets. The Meta Quest Pro will now cost $1,000 instead of $1,500, while the 256 GB model of the Meta Quest 2 will drop in price from $500 to $430.

This news was announced in a blog post, where Meta gave its reasoning for the price drop. "Our goal has always been to create hardware that’s affordable for as many people as possible to take advantage of all that VR has to offer," it explains. "While we aren’t lowering the price of Meta Quest 2’s 128GB SKU, a new lower price for 256GB of storage will let even more people feel the joy of fully immersive games and experiences. Similarly, by lowering the price of Meta Quest Pro, we’re making our industry-leading Meta Reality technology and Infinite Display optical stack available to even more businesses and professionals around the world."

Computing

The best VR headset might be one you’ve never heard of

Alan Truly turns toward the camera, wearing the Varjo Aero VR headset.

It's no surprise that the best VR headsets are those in use by corporations and organizations that are doing simulation, design, and research. While Meta, HTC, and other well-known VR headset manufacturers have upped their game with the latest batch of high-end, consumer headsets, they still can't really compete with the very best from companies like Varjo that design specifically for the enterprise VR market.

You might not have heard of this company before, but in 2022 Varjo began shipping its lowest-cost model, the $1,990 Varjo Aero VR headset. The new headset quickly began making waves as one of the best PCVR solutions available to consumers. I recently had a chance to go hands-on with this premium VR device to find out whether it's really worth the expense.
The best display