Meta is bringing new improvements to the hand tracking system on its Quest virtual reality platform including support for new types of motion gestures like clapping, according to The Verge. After a limited preview for developers, a new version of the company’s Presence Platform API is launching for everyone and it promises more sophisticated and reliable interactions on the Meta Quest headset.
The update is aimed at improving Quest hand tracking. The device uses cameras mounted on the headset to replace the default hardware controllers. In addition to reliability updates, it also tries to recognise movements when part of the user’s hand is blocked from the camera’s view.
It has now been tuned to detect clapping, crossed hands, high-fives and other gestures where parts of the hand are blocked from the camera’s view. Improvements are also meant to be made to the detection of thumbs-up motions and other gestures like pinching, grabbing and poking. This could also mean customer gestures built by developers could be better as well. The Quest devices and VR platform are an important part of Meta’s push towards being a leader in the Metaverse.
Earlier this week, Ajit Mohan, the Vice President & Managing Director, India, Meta, spoke to The Indian Express about how the company has not cracked all of the metaverse and how it wants to help other companies build compelling use-cases of the metaverse.
On April 11, the company announced that it is testing new tools to enable creators to monetise what they are building on Horizon Worlds, a free online virtual reality game published by Meta platforms for the Meta Quest and previous Oculus-branded VR headsets.
Before that, on March 16, Meta had announced a suite of new parental supervision and control tools aimed at Quest users including the automatic blocking of age-inappropriate content apps, a new parent dashboard and the expansion of the unlock pattern as an extra layer of security to block certain applications and content.
