A new teaser video suggests that hand tracking support could be added to Vacation Simulator on Oculus Quest.
Devin Reimer, CEO of Google-owned developer Owlchemy Labs, posted a video to Twitter showing a scene from Vacation Simulator, except with the player using hand tracking to make a peace and thumbs up sign. In a reply, Reimer mentioned that this was definitely not the Valve Index hand tracking at work. While there’s no indication of any release date, overall this looks like a pretty strong indication that Vacation Simulator on Quest and Quest 2 might receive an update that adds in hand tracking as an input method.
What is this?! pic.twitter.com/H8tDj3Kqz4
— Devin Reimer (@DevinReimer) November 16, 2020
We’ll of course need to see details on exactly how much of the game is transferable to controller-free hand tracking. Owlchemy’s games are so familiar and any quality loss to the stability of gesture recognition would likely be instantly recognizable. Not a lot of games have added hand tracking support since the feature’s launch, with Richie’s Plank Experience, Waltz of the Wizard, Virtual Desktop and others being some of the exceptions.
Both of Owlchemy’s ‘Simulator’ games are now available on Oculus Quest and they were recently enhanced for Oculus Quest 2. Improvements for both titles include some visual upgrades, removing foveated rendering and support for 90Hz on Quest 2, which is rolling out now as part of the v23 update.
Vacation Simulator also recently received the free Back to Job expansion, which adds in several mechanics from the original Job Simulator game into Vacation Simulator.
Job Simulator and Vacation Simulator are available on most VR platforms. You can read our review of the latter here.
