Direct touch and body tracking are coming to the Quest V50 beta
The current Quest system is V49, which brings a new UI design and other new features. According to the MIXED report, some users in the Quest public test channel have already used the V50 beta version first and found many interesting features in it.
The first is the direct touch feature, discovered by Reddit user deliciouspotato2, which is part of the gesture control. In the past gesture operation, the user needs to use the thumb and index finger to point to the place to be clicked, and then pinch the thumb and index finger to click. While it’s nice to be able to operate without the handle, it can be cumbersome and lacks precision in certain movements, such as typing or swiping.
Image: Immersed Robot
Direct touch is a more intuitive behavior. Users can directly place their index finger on the window or keyboard to click, just like operating a smartphone. But unlike a smartphone, the user is not touching a solid surface, but waving their fingers in the air. Immersed Robot, who posted a video about direct touch, also said the feature lacks tactile feedback.
The second function is full-body tracking, which appears in the permission control interface, which was also discovered by deliciouspotato2. But he did not find the impact of this permission on the system and other applications. At the Meta Connect conference last year, Meta mentioned the whole body tracking, because so far, the characters in Meta Horizon still have no legs, which is obviously not enough for the Metaverse. However, compared to direct touch, it is extremely difficult to achieve full-body tracking using only the headset and handles without relying on additional accessories, so we are unlikely to see full-body tracking implemented in the official version.
