So how much did Meta’s improved hand-tracking on the Quest actually improve responsiveness?

Apple showcased a bit of the Vision Pro during its WWDC of 2023 and one of the things that seems to have resonated deeply with all members of the XR community (and industry) is hand-tracking and controller-less navigation.

And you can’t really blame us — because I’m in that group of people too — because after seeing that a seriously Big Tech player like Apple is aiming to provide this level of control without two pieces of plastic strapped needing to be strapped to my hands, nothing is the same.

So while I’m very eager to ask Meta “why wasn’t this enabled day one in the first place”, I must give credit to the company for not pretending like everything is set in stone. Because after this recent update, hand-tracking on the Quest VR headset has reduced latency up to 40%.



So, OS update v56 includes Meta’s Hands 2.2 tracking improvements and it is currently rolling out to Quest headsets. And that 40% was just the start, because for fast movement, it can go up to 75% — because faster hand movements require less precision, after all.

Meta published a blog post about this back when it was only an upcoming feature, and it contains some recommended apps that you can check out in order to notice the difference:

• Move Fast (demo app)
• Litesport
• VR Workout

These upgrades are coming to the Meta Quest 2 and the Meta Quest Pro — and will later on become available in an even more refined form on the Quest 3, when it releases. The Pro in particular has also gotten some extra goodies such as:

• Multimodal tracking, which includes things like:
  ○Support for Hand and Controller gameplay
  ○ Instant transition between hands and controllers
• Capsense Hands, which is best understood from the demo video you can see below

Hand tracking is important, because it brings AR and VR closer to us, without us having to adjust beyond our comfort zone to be a part of it. Or in other words: pointing, pinching and snapping just feels like a more natural way to achieve things, man.