A new Vacation Simulator update adds support for the Quest 2’s new High Frequency Hand Tracking mode, increasing performance and decreasing latency.
The update is available now and improves the reliability and performance when using hand tracking, thanks to an increase in the rate of tracking. The feature is only available to Oculus Quest 2 players – the original Quest still supports hand tracking, but without the high frequency tracking mode.
Human! Today we released the High Frequency Hand Tracking update for Vacation Simulator on Oculus Quest 2. 👋
This update brings improved tracking and lower latency to deliver a more immersive experience. Explore Vacation Island with just your human hands from start to finish! pic.twitter.com/J5jyknRPCV
— Owlchemy Labs (@OwlchemyLabs) April 29, 2021
Previously, the Quest 2 camera’s hand tracking was limited to a rate of 30Hz. Earlier this week, Oculus gave developers the option to enable a ‘High Frequency Hand Tracking’ mode that ups the rate to 60Hz and reduces end-to-end latency by 10%.
Overall, the new mode is meant to be more effective for tracking fast hand movements. It does possess a slight increase in jitter in low-light situations, but Facebook says this will be fixed in a future update.
You can read more about the High Frequency Hand Tracking mode and how developers can enable it here.
Vacation Simulator is one of very few games that has added support for the new 60Hz hand tracking mode. Hand Physics Simulator is another, which rolled out support fairly quickly after Facebook announced the feature. In our anecdotal tests, we found that the high frequency tracking really improved the hand tracking experience in Hand Physics Lab.
It’s uncertain whether all or most games that support hand tracking support will be able to include support for the new high frequency tracking mode. It does come with an increased performance cost, which means that some games with less performance overhead might have to stick with the standard 30Hz rate.
What do you think of the new High Frequency Hand Tracking mode? Let us know what you think in the comments.
