Hand Tracking on Oculus Quest this week

[dburne]

https://www.oculus.com/blog/thumbs-up-hand-tracking-now-available-on-oculus-quest/

Apparently Oculus is a little ahead of schedule.

I will have to check this out one the update rolls out to my Quest.

Edited December 10, 2019 by dburne

[chiliwili69]

This is interesting, not for IL-2 VR but for other apps/games.

I was using the leapmotion module with the DK2 about 3-4 year ago, and it was already quite nice. 

[dburne]

My Quest is on standby just waiting for Version 12 to drop to it. Very anxious to check this out.

[dburne]

Ok so my Quest got updated to Version 12 late yesterday evening, and have had a chance to play around some with the hand tracking this morning.

My initial thoughts:

 

First this is very early in the tech for Oculus, in fact it falls under the "Experimental" category. 

Once updated to Version 12 on the Quest, you can go into settings and enable Hand Tracking. You then get a toggle on the Dash menu, to toggle between hands or Touch Controllers.

 

After watching the very brief tutorial, I had a go with it. First I was amazed, yep there were my hands being represented accurately in the Quest Home, each finger represented and moving pretty accurately to the movement of each of my fingers. 

So then I had a look at seeing what I could do.  To press/select on something, you basically pinch with your thumb and forefinger.  Whilst slightly cumbersome for me at first, I quickly got used to doing it and navigating in the Quest menu easily. To scroll you just pinch and hold together, and move your hand up or down to scroll , or left and right . Worked fairly well.

 

I then browsed some YouTube VR videos using just my hands, and it was not too bad.

Certainly at least currently the Touch Controllers are easier to use, and many of the apps require them and won't accept the hands feature.

However it is very early, and undoubtedly as time marches on Oculus will continue to refine the tech and make it better.

I can see this probably being a much bigger deal say a year or so from now if they continue to pursue the technology. Especially in the social aspect where VR enthusiasts gather together. Oh and yes, quite easy to flip a bird lol.

And the great thing - no cost to the end user to implement if they have Quest as it is included now with the Quest device.

 

Some of the downsides - the hand tracking gets very iffy if one moves the hands to close to the body, or extends them out all the way from the body. Seems to be a much smaller area where the hand tracking is picked up versus the Touch Controllers. I am sure this is an area that will be refined with time.

Put your hands together, and both hands disappear in the image. 

 

No hint or indication if/when this same technology might come to the Rift/Rift S. They have unified now at least the version numbers of the Rift and Quest software, so maybe one day the software itself will be unified who knows. I "suspect" that the Rift line for Oculus may be phased out, with the Quest line becoming the flagship product and eventually an all in one device for both PC and Mobile - which with Link can now be done somewhat already. I am sure their longer term goal is in the wireless arena, which I think they will use Quest.

 

I myself will continue to use the hand tracking feature of the Quest when I am using it , in areas currently in the software that it can be used. Kind of fun to do.

But of course for all my combat flight sim needs, my Rift S still gets the nod for those. I am a VR enthusiast though and enjoy many different games/experiences using VR, so it made sense for me to grab a Quest also.

Edited December 12, 2019 by dburne

[Alonzo]

6 hours ago, dburne said:

No hint or indication if/when this same technology might come to the Rift/Rift S. They have unified now at least the version numbers of the Rift and Quest software, so maybe one day the software itself will be unified who knows. I "suspect" that the Rift line for Oculus may be phased out, with the Quest line becoming the flagship product and eventually an all in one device for both PC and Mobile - which with Link can now be done somewhat already. I am sure their longer term goal is in the wireless arena, which I think they will use Quest.

 

I saw someone (on Reddit, so maybe not 100% right) that Carmack had said they found some unused capacity in the Quest SoC (system on chip) that means they can do the hand processing in hardware, without using more resources. The Rift S doesn't have that particular hardware, so it wouldn't be able to do it for 'zero' performance cost. Of course, they've done a lot with the software on Rift S, so maybe something will happen with hand tracking, maybe somehow on the PC side of it, and not with zero CPU cost.

[dburne]

Official Statement from Oculus regarding Hand Tracking for Rift S: