Aldin Dynamics and Fast Travel Games are set to become the first developers with hand tracking support across their full games in the Oculus Quest Store.
Developers behind The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets (Fast Travel) and Waltz of the Wizard (Aldin) sat down exclusively with UploadVR in our virtual studio to discuss the updates.
The new feature will arrive in the games after Quest’s system software v17 rolls out fully to Oculus Quest standalone headsets around the world. The update will move hand tracking from its experimental phase into a general release feature. Quest system updates are typically distributed over the course of several days to stagger the release and ensure stability across all devices. Curious Tale was rated “really good” when we reviewed it last year while Waltz has been expanded for years now, with more updates planned and more than 400,000 people across all VR systems playing some version of the magic-infused title.
The new versions of Curious Tale and Waltz will be joined by Elixir, a tech demo first shown at Facebook’s last VR developers conference last year. On May 28, a pair of “cinematic narratives” with support for the feature will launch as Facebook begins to more broadly accept the submission of hand tracking updates from various developers to its store.
I spoke with Aldin Dynamics CEO Hrafn Thorisson about their path over more than half a decade building VR software for development kits, then Vive room-scale support in early 2016 and onto support for hand tracking in Waltz of the Wizard in 2020. Jamie Feltham sat down with Kristoffer Benjaminsson, CTO of Fast Travel Games, to discuss the new feature which lets you solve mysteries and recover missing pets with just your bare hands.
