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[UNRESOLVED as of May 30, 2024] - Quest 3 Controller Tracking Issues

NotDream
Protege

update May 30, 2024: There have been no updates/improvements to controller tracking since Meta Support marked this as solved! Community consensus seems to be that this issue stems from hardware/software limitations with the controllers, specifically the method of tracking (as a software developer working specifically in the machine learning and computer vision space, I agree that this technology is not particularly robust enough to handle some types of movement). If you play games that require fast hand movements and/or dynamic hand positioning, I would recommend not buying a Quest 3, unfortunately. I've heard some anecdotes regarding improved tracking with the Quest Pro controllers, but the improvements are marginal at best - not worth the additional ~$300 for minimal performance gains IMO. My personal recommendation is to stick to Quest 2. Not to detract from the various improvements that the Quest 3 has brought (e.g., color passthrough w/higher resolution, better hand tracking, higher overall hardware specs compared to Quest 2, etc.), but Quest 2 controller tracking is significantly better than the Quest 3's. Ideally, my hope is that Meta will push an update that allows for pairing Quest 2 controllers with the Quest 3, but as of right now, that's just a pipe dream as Meta has given no indication of making these headsets/controllers backwards compatible. While I'm (naively) hopeful that things will change, realistically speaking, I have 0 expectations and a lot of disappointment.

 

tl;dr: I've had a Quest 2 for almost 3 years. I received my Quest 3 today and was very excited to use it. Controller tracking performance is much worse than the Quest 2, at least in the context of games where you swing your arms as fast as you can. This was not a problem for the Quest 2 (unless controllers were physically damaged, e.g., hitting a wall, dropping them, etc.). Don't buy if you play games like Gorilla Tag, Beat Saber, Synth Riders, or any of the other games mentioned throughout this thread!!!

 

Question:
Are there ways to modify the Quest 3's controller tracking such that fast hand movements won't be affected by the prediction-like behavior where the in-game hand moves farther than you swing? When I perform a baseball throwing movement with my hand/arm, the tracking will not keep up and it ends up losing my hand's position for a fraction of a second, causing my in-game hand to be positioned farther away than my hand actually is (this is not an issue with Quest 2 controller tracking).

 

Details/Context:
I primarily use VR for exercise, and I mostly play Gorilla Tag. Gorilla Tag is a game where you play as the upper half of a gorilla, using your arms as your means of locomotion. Basically, you use your arms as if they were your legs, and you can run, climb trees, wall-run, etc. It's an infection-based tagging game where you join a lobby of up to 9 other people, and the game will randomly select a player to be the first tagger. The tagger(s) will continue tagging until everyone in the lobby has been tagged (infection-style), and then a random player will be selected as first tagger; this pattern just continuously repeats.

While the learning curve is pretty steep to play at a high level, there is a growing community of players who are very competitive (approx. 10-20k players based on the communities I participate in - Competitive Gorilla Tag on Discord and Gorilla Tag Competitive on Discord). As a prominent member of this community, people have been seeking my feedback on whether or not the Quest 3 is worth it. While I feel that a majority of the new features are amazing, I have had issues with the controller tracking.

Gorilla Tag is an active game where you're constantly swinging your arms as fast as you can to travel around the map(s) to avoid being tagged. The primary player base for the game is Quest 2 users. Aside from physical damage, most players have not had any problems with controller tracking on the Quest 2, aside from when the controller goes out of the tracking range of the headset (as expected). 

However, the Quest 3 controllers lose tracking during medium-fast to fast hand movement (medium-fast: like playing catch with a friend; fast: throwing a baseball as hard as you can). The consequence of this in the context of Gorilla Tag is that your in-game arm extends to the game's max arm length frequently, causing your hand to collide with the wall/tree/ground and launch you away from the surface. This is a big issue for games/activities involving fast-paced hand movement as it's not nearly as reliable as the Quest 2 controller tracking performance. 

508 REPLIES 508

zazasong
Honored Guest

Still a problem in 03/23/2024. Don't buy a quest 3 if you want to play beat saber in expert mode.

Speedy64i
Explorer

100% agree, the tracking with Quest 3 in beat saber and other high speed large movement games is awful, it seems if you keep your hands in front of you it's fine, but go even the slightest bit over your head or straight out to the side and tracking is lost.  complete garbage for beat saber vs my old quest 1 or 2.

There is nothing on the controllers and issues still occurring, but thanks.

SkulllFace
Protege

Are there any updates on this issue? Its been months since I used my Quest 3 because of this tracking issue and its unusable at this point.  

My controllers lose tracking playing Golf+ all the time. My room is well let, there are no mirrors or reflective surfaces in my room. They do okay if I don't swing too hard, but when I really go at it, I completely lose my controller tracking.

I am using a DeadEye Driver Elite 28" accessory.

I wear short sleeve shirts.

Thank you

SkulllFace
Protege

I thought the problem is only with games where you swing really hard like cricket. They really to do something to fix this issue but I doubt that since it’s a hardware issue and the AI tracking is not working well. 

Fangzhou
Adventurer

Meta declare that they are working on improvement of controller tracking. However after recent update (v64) controller tracking become significantly worse than previous version. Now there is a 100% reproducible problem, whenever the controller is out of camera range (for example playing beat saber with a cross hand pose, i.e. right hand wave to left and  left hand wave to  right), even it's just a moment less than half second, the controller will lost tracking and introduce a delay when try to move to the correct position. 

This seems because when controller is out and back to tracking area, the system try to use hand tracking mode first, takes noticeable time to track hand, then change to tracking LED light. That behavior causing a delay or non-accurate tracking. Although it's just sub-second and the tracking will not got totally lost, it's enough to fail a difficult beat saber song. 

Maybe the product managers are not VR users, just blindly imagining how people would use this device, and come up with a conclusion "We should focus on hand tracking, controller tracking may be worse a little bit but 99% of the time it will be accurate so people won't care" or "users will get use to the tracking range and will then not move their hand out of the tracking range". NO, that's not the real case. 

And meta developers, I understand you guys may want to eventually use hand tracking instead of controller tracking, so now aggressively onboard and testing "use hand tracking on controllers" this kind of feature. But don't break existing feature is the bottom line of feature development. Now this new feature is still useless, what you do is only "breaking existing features". There should at least a config to disable the new feature if the new feature is going to break something. 

TheEnder22
Explorer

So a few things I've done or noticed since first finding this thread:

  • Turn off hand tracking in settings, that makes a HUGE difference
  • Keep the controllers within view of the cameras as much as possible. For example, I downloaded the Synth Riders/Smash Drums package when it was on sale. Smash Drums was absolutely horrible with tracking, constantly missing hits, I was going to return it. I adjusted the drums to be a little further up and also stood back, and keep my hands in front of me of more than what feels natural, and it's so much better. Unfortunately as I get tired and just because it's more natural to put my arms more by my side and therefore the controllers move lower, the drums get missed again. We shouldn't have to adjust how we play and possibly cause ergonomic issues because of their faulty product/software.
  • In Synth Riders, it constantly mixes up which hand it thinks is hitting the orbs. Sometimes it's a positive because I know I missed the orb or used the wrong hand, but it tracks it as a proper hit.

Overall this is a joke of an upgrade from 2 to 3 where the tracking is so, so much worse. The visuals are better and the headset is lighter, but the AI tracking is a huge downgrade.

Been six months. Is there a fix? Thanks.

Karmagedon
Protege

i wanna throw it i the wall. worst worst vr headset since dk1. ridiculous.. why is there no a class action for this..  they totally fuc%$$% us over right in our face. 

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