VRChat is easily one of the most popular apps for the Oculus Quest. Why wouldn’t it be? The ability to dive into a virtual world is exciting. VRChat, of course, supports the Oculus. But, does it support hand tracking? Let’s take a look.
The answer is that VRChat technically does not support hand tracking with the Oculus Quest. However, if you have VRChat on Steam and use the virtual desktop feature of your Oculus, then it will be able to track your hand movements. An alternative option is to use ALVR to utilize full-blown hand and finger tracking.
Let’s go into a bit more depth on this. This is because we know it can be somewhat confusing for people to know that you need to use a completely different VRChat software to use hand tracking on the Oculus Quest.
Can you use hand tracking on VRChat on Oculus Quest?
You have two options for using hand tracking in VRChat; the first method is to use the software on Steam and then connect your Oculus Quest via the virtual desktop mode.
Of course, we do want to point out that the hand tracking support for the Oculus Quest, even when you do this, is going to be basic at most. At the time of writing, it seems that outside of finger tracking, the VRChat Steam software is not brilliant at anything related to the Oculus Quest tracking. You will always need to have your controllers in hand if you want to use VRChat properly.
The second method is to use ALVR instead of Virtual desktop; this will allow you to utilize full-blown hand tracking, including finger tracking.
Let’s take you through how you can get everything working on your Oculus Quest, shall we? Starting with the Virtual Desktop method.
Download The Software On Steam
Firstly, you are going to need to get that software downloaded on Steam. If you do not have Steam, then head to www.steampowered.com. It is free to download.
Once you have Steam downloaded, navigate the store and download VRChat. Again, this is free to download.
Set Up Virtual Desktop
You will now need to download the Oculus software for your PC. You can do this from the Oculus website. This is free to do.
Within the software, you will want to be selecting the Air Link option. This may be buried under experimental settings, but it will be somewhere. The position seems to change with each release of the software.
You will need to do the same through your Oculus headset. Go through the settings until you find Air Link.
Play VRChat
At all times, you will need to have the Oculus software running on your PC. Air Link will not work without it.
Start by opening up Air Link on your Oculus Quest. Again, this will be under settings. Select your computer. You should now see the desktop.
You can now open up VRChat and play.
Do bear in mind that there may be a small amount of lag when using Air Link. This is because everything is going to be operating over Wi-Fi. If you want the system to work perfectly, then you will need to ensure that you have the minimum amount of congestion on your Wi-Fi possible.
Some people find that positioning their computer and their Oculus Quest as close as they possibly can to their Wi-Fi router helps to deal with the vast majority of lag issues, so you may want to try that.
Alternative Method For Hand & Finger tracking (ALVR Method)
The Virtual Desktop method is great for emulating the Oculus touch controller’s hand tracking gestures. However, if you want to take it to another and utilize full-blown finger tracking ALVR is the way to go. Here’s a full guide on how to do so.
Why Does The VRChat App On Oculus Quest Not Support Hand Tracking?
There is a great deal of speculation about this at the moment.
The prevailing belief at the moment is that the team behind VRChat has not received all of the tools that they need to be able to recognize hand movements through the Oculus. This makes sense, really. After all, even if you use VRChat via the virtual desktop feature, it is not going to have full movement mirroring. You will still need to be using your controllers for certain gestures.
Of course, since the Oculus Quest is by far the most popular VR system in the world, chances are that it won’t be too long before VRChat supports full hand tracking through it. After all, we reckon that this is how the vast majority of people will be using the VRChat app. They just need to ensure that they get it right.
Why Is The VRChat App Not Recognizing My Hand Gestures on Oculus Quest?
Assuming that you are using the Steam version of Oculus Quest, then at the time of writing, the VRChat software does not support full tracking for the Oculus Quest. The app for Oculus Quest does not support tracking at all.
There is a strong chance that this is something that is going to be changing in the future. However, we cannot possibly give you a timeframe since the team at VRChat have yet to give a time frame on it either.
Conclusion
The VRChat app on the Oculus Quest will not support hand tracking. If you want support for hand tracking, then you are going to need to be using ALVR or virtual desktop on your Oculus Quest in combination with the VRChat software on Steam. Do bear in mind that, even then, it is not going to be supporting full hand tracking. This is something that is likely to be improved later on. This is all down to the Oculus being a fairly new device, and the VRChat team need to know how to work with it properly.
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