Apple and Meta Forge Divergent Paths on Hand Tracking for VR Interactions
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Apple's Vision Pro relies on hand tracking for navigation instead of controllers, which works well for 2D interactions but struggles with more complex 3D spaces.
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Meta's Quest headsets use physical controllers but also have controller-free hand tracking, which sometimes feels better than Vision Pro's hand tracking for 3D interactions.
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Hand tracking on mixed reality headsets is still in early days and the gestural language could evolve significantly, like multitouch gestures evolved on smartphones over time.
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Owlchemy Labs is exploring more advanced hand tracking interactions like pinch gestures and grabbing objects, going beyond Vision Pro's current capabilities.
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Peripheral devices like controllers, haptics, Apple Pencil, etc. may arrive later to enable more specialized and refined interactions once the hands-only interactions are pushed as far as possible.