Meta Quest 2 Hand-Tracking Patch Brings VR Closer Than Ever To Minority Report Inputs

After 21 years, this Meta Quest update may finally bring us the type of interface interaction we remember from the 2002 film Minority Report. Facebook parent company and VR hardware manufacturer and developer, Meta, has rolled out its Meta Quest v50 Update which includes a new experimental feature that the company calls Direct Touch.

This new interface allows you to interact with your Meta Quest 2 Home environment like any touch-screen device. Of course, you would not get any tactile feel as the interface has no surface to touch—the interface example Meta gave looks very much like what you would see in certain science-fiction films. There are additional improvements beyond interaction in the update as well.


Meta has included in-game multitasking, which is the ability to use 2D apps without closing the game you are currently playing. That's pretty interesting when we consider that multitasking as we know it today has been in computers for a very long time. It is fun to think about how we've come full circle to recreate something we already had, just with a different interface. Still, this can be useful for users who want to look up a guide for a section they're struggling with, without needing to remove their headsets or close the game.

The final bit of the update is specific to the Meta Quest Touch Pro controllers. Meta touts that these are self-tracking and responsive but admits they were a little slow to figure out their position in space upon initial use. The update brings forward an improvement in that spatial recognition time, as well as improvements to detection between hand tracking and controller usage.


The headlining Direct Touch feature is a follow-up to the Hand Tracking function introduced by the company in December 2019, which Apple has recently claimed to have done with its VR attempt. According to the Meta Quest blog page, the updates should get a rolling release out to Meta Quest 2 & Meta Quest Pro users. So, if you don't have it yet, be patient, you're likely in a later update group. Meta has not commented on whether or not it is developing a pre-crime division.