hand tracking
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Quest headset apps now support hand clapping and high-fives
Apps for Meta's Quest VR headset now support hand claps, high-fives and other new controller-free gestures.
'Tetris Effect' is now available on Oculus Quest
Oculus Quest is one year old and it's getting a bunch of updates to celebrate.
Oculus Quest hand tracking is available as an experimental feature
You don't have to wait until 2020 to try Oculus Quest hand tracking, at least so long as you're willing to accept some limits. Oculus is trotting out the controller-free input method as an option in the "Experimental Features" menu this week. You can only use it in the main interface as well as first-party apps like the web browser and Oculus TV, but that still allows you to ditch the grips for common tasks. You can switch back to controllers through a quick toggle in the home screen.
Oculus Quest's hand tracking is a new level of VR immersion
Even though we had an inkling Oculus was working on hand tracking, it was still a huge surprise to see just how it would be implementing the feature. It'll be coming to the Oculus Quest next year — but best of all, it doesn't require any additional hardware, unlike Leap Motion's solution. Instead, Facebook is tapping into the Quest's four monochromatic cameras and a heavy dose of computer vision. To be honest, it sounds like magic — and it basically feels like that, too.
Microsoft Research crafts wrist-worn device that tracks hand gestures in 3D space (video)
A team led by researchers at Microsoft's UK-based R&D lab has crafted a system that tracks the full 3D pose of a user's hand without the need for a pesky glove. Dubbed Digits, the Kinect-inspired rig latches onto a user's wrist and utilizes a diffuse infrared light, IR laser, camera and inertial measurement unit to track fingertips and just five key points of a hand. Leveraging a pair of mathematical models developed in-house after studying the mechanics of the human hand, the group uses the captured data to extrapolate the position of a user's paw. The team envisions the solution as a supplement to touch-based interfaces, a method for eyes-free control of mobile devices and as a gaming controller that could work in conjunction with Kinect or similar systems. In its current state, the device is composed of off-the-shelf parts and needs to be tethered to a laptop, but the ultimate goal is to create a mobile, self contained unit the size of a wrist watch. Hit the break to catch a video of the setup in action or tap the second source link below for more details in the group's academic paper.
Qualcomm demos touch-free gesture control for tablets powered by Snapdragon (video)
Tablets are for touching -- that much is understood. But Qualcomm's making it so your fingers will be mostly optional, thanks to the Kinect-like powers of its Snapdragon CPU. To highlight this, the company's uploaded a couple of videos to its YouTube channel that showcase two practical use case scenarios for the gesture tech: gaming and cooking. Using the device's front-facing camera, users will one day soon be able to control onscreen avatars, page forward and back through recipes, setup profiles and even wake their slates all with simple hand or head movements. Alright, so tactile-free navigation of this sort isn't exactly new, but it does up open up the tablet category to a whole new world of innovation. Head past the break to peek the demos in action.
