Unity Editor - Hand Tracking over Link Problem

[Emma890]

I've spent the last two years creating for the Quest 2 and now received the Quest 3. It's an excellent item, and I am quite pleased with it. There is only one major issue standing between me and complete developer joy.

How is it feasible that we won't have a stable, robust hand tracking implementation across the entire development pipeline by 2023? I'm not sure how Meta expects developers to fully utilize their (really good) hand tracking technology if there are consistent discrepancies, fumbling about, and attempting seven different versions of all of the small SDKs, components, etc.

Could someone kindly tell me how to create a simple Unity scene using the normal Oculus Integration, so that I can simply click "Play" in the editor and have hand tracking working via my Link cable?

So far, I've tested five different Unity versions ranging from 2021 to 2023, as well as several different Oculus Integration SDK versions (v50-57) and three different headsets. 

Nothing worked. The only way I've been able to get hand tracking working in the editor via link is to utilize a long-deprecated version of the Oculus Integration, which required me to explicitly pick "Oculus -> Tools -> OVR Utilities Plugin -> Set OVRPlugin to Legacy LibOVR+VRAPI" from within Unity. Three things. First, this option is no longer available in later Oculus Integration releases. Second, picking this option clearly prevents the possibility of building for Quests 2 and 3. To get hand tracking to work in the editor, you'd have to switch between the old LibOVR+VRAPI and the newer OpenXR integration multiple times. Really? Third, we cannot realistically expect developers to continue to this historical API because all of the latest mixed reality features, such as scene understanding, spatial anchoring, and so on, are not supported by the older version. As a result, I'd want to raise my original issue once more: how does Meta expect people to create for their platform?

Please let me know if you have a solution to this problem; I would appreciate any insights!