A tease from Fast Travel Games may suggest Facebook will soon let developers officially integrate hand-tracking into their Oculus Quest titles.
Fast Travel just teased support for hand-tracking in its charming puzzler, The Curious Tale Of The Stolen Pets. The GIF in the below tweet shows a player interacting with the game’s diorama-sized world, using their finger to push a dog on a swing. It works just like it did with the controller, except now you don’t need to hold anything in your hands.
👋+🐶=❤️
Coming Soon. #OculusQuest pic.twitter.com/S2IzZry4oN
— Fast Travel Games (@fasttravelgames) May 5, 2020
The tweet simply says ‘Coming Soon’, with no other details. As far as we’re aware, this is the first time a developer has shown official integration of hand-tracking in a game available on the Oculus Store.
Quest hand-tracking was launched as an experimental feature late last year. Officially, you can only use it in Quest’s menu and on the Oculus web browser, but developers have integrated the feature into their sideloaded projects, too. Over the past few months, Facebook has improved the stability of the tracking with multiple updates. Fast Travel’s tease suggests Oculus may be preparing to let developers officially integrate the feature into their titles on the Oculus Store.
We’ve asked Facebook if official integration for Quest hand-tracking is nearing.
That said, don’t expect every Quest game to get hand-tracking support. Curious Tale — which we’re very fond of — seems like an especially good fit considering it’s a stationary puzzle game, but titles with lots of locomotion and fast-paced mechanics might not suit it.
What other Oculus Quest games would you like to get hand-tracking support? Let us know in the comments below!
