Hand tracking has been the promise hanging over VR for years: put down the controllers and interact with virtual worlds using your actual hands. In early 2026, we’re far enough along for a proper assessment. The technology works. But “works” and “works well enough to replace controllers” are very different statements.

Quest Hand Tracking v2.2

Meta has iterated aggressively on hand tracking since the Quest 2 first introduced it. The current implementation on Quest 3 and Quest 3S is genuinely impressive for what it does.

Finger articulation is accurate enough for pointing, pinching, and grabbing. Latency has dropped to where casual interactions feel natural. Menu navigation, UI interaction, and simple object manipulation work reliably in well-lit environments.

The system uses outward-facing cameras, which means your hands need to be visible. Reach behind your back, drop your hands to your sides, or bring them too close together, and tracking degrades or drops entirely.

Quest hand tracking works well for navigating menus, watching media, casual mixed reality apps, and productivity tools like virtual desktops. It’s noticeably less reliable for fast movements, interactions near the camera’s edge, precise manipulation of small objects, and two-handed interactions where hands overlap.

Vision Pro’s Different Approach

Apple uses eye tracking combined with hand gestures rather than mapping virtual hands into the scene. You look at what you want to interact with, then pinch to select. It’s elegant for visionOS — scrolling and selecting feels natural within minutes.

But it’s not “hand tracking” in the way most VR users think about it. You’re performing a small gesture the system interprets as a click, not reaching out to grab objects. For experiences involving reaching, throwing, or manipulating objects, Apple’s approach doesn’t translate. Vision Pro does support full hand tracking for immersive experiences, but the implementation is less mature than Meta’s and fewer developers have built for it.

The Accuracy Gap

Academic studies measuring hand tracking accuracy on Quest hardware report positional errors of 10-20mm for fingertip tracking under good conditions. That sounds small, but when you’re pressing a virtual button or picking up a virtual tool, 15mm of uncertainty makes interactions feel imprecise.

Controller tracking on Quest is accurate to roughly 1-2mm. That order-of-magnitude difference explains why controllers feel dramatically better for most interactions.

The gap is most obvious in three scenarios:

Fine motor interaction. Threading a virtual needle, operating small controls, precision object placement. Controllers with thumbstick input handle these far better.

Sustained grip. Holding a virtual tool for extended periods. With controllers, you physically grip something. With hand tracking, subtle posture changes cause phantom releases.

Rapid sequential inputs. Gaming scenarios needing quick button presses. Controllers have discrete inputs with clear activation points. Hand gestures have ambiguous boundaries leading to missed inputs.

Where Controllers Still Win

Controllers remain superior for the majority of VR interactions. They provide haptic feedback, physical buttons, thumbsticks for locomotion, sub-millimetre accuracy, consistent tracking regardless of hand position, and no fatigue from holding hands up. For gaming, creative tools, professional applications, and training simulations, controllers aren’t going away soon.

Where Hand Tracking Makes Sense

There are genuine use cases where hand tracking is already better.

Quick interactions. Checking a notification or pausing a video is faster without picking up controllers. This is why Meta defaults to hand tracking in the Quest home environment.

Mixed reality. Having your real hands visible — picking up a coffee cup while interacting with a virtual interface — makes mixed reality feel more natural.

Public installations. Museum exhibits, trade show demos, and retail experiences work better when visitors don’t need to learn controller operation first.

Accessibility. Users with motor impairments that make gripping controllers difficult can benefit, though the technology needs further development for this community.

The Trajectory

Hand tracking will improve. Machine learning will get better at predicting hand position during occlusion. New sensor arrays in future headsets will improve accuracy. Haptic gloves, if they reach consumer prices, could address the feedback gap.

But we’re likely three to five years from hand tracking that matches controller fidelity for general-purpose VR. Until then, the practical advice is straightforward: use hand tracking where it makes sense, keep your controllers charged for everything else, and be sceptical of anyone claiming controller-free VR is ready for primetime.

It’s getting better, measurably and consistently. It’s just not there yet.