Hands-on: Oculus Quest hand tracking looks cool, and sometimes even works

When a company unexpectedly adds a major new feature to a device after you’ve purchased it, or downplays the feature as a “bonus” that isn’t core to the product’s functionality, it’s tempting to accept the feature — flaws and all — as better than not having it at all. That thought has been on my mind as I’ve tested Oculus Quest’s new hand tracking feature over the past few days: I’m thrilled that the feature is here, and I fully understand its potential, but I’m not actually finding it useful for anything. Yet.

Brief recap: Facebook rolled out the feature last week using its terrible and crazy software update mechanism, which requires people to leave their Quests on and keep checking back for days after firmware first hits Oculus servers. Once it’s installed, you need to dig into a menu to activate it as an Experimental Feature, then manually select “use hands” in settings every time you want an alternative to the included Oculus Touch controllers.