Contrary to what its name might suggest, Shiny Quagsire is not a Pokemon chromatic, but the engineer having found an undocumented secret by Meta : the thumb rest of the Meta Quest Pro controllers is actually a touchpad.
The engineer demonstrated the functionality of the touchpad in a short clip posted to Twitter. As we can see in the video below, it’s getting closer to gamepads Index of Valvealso equipped with a touchpad.
apparently the Quest Pro controllers have a touchpad, but I can’t find literally any documentation on it for some reason aside from “oh, the thumb rest is pressure sensitive” pic.twitter.com/eZzWa7cMxX
—Shiny Quagsire (@ShinyQuagsire) November 8, 2022
Whether Meta consider the curved section of the joystick face Touch Pro like a pressure sensorspecifying that it can detect up to 6 Newtons, the company hasn’t disclosed that it’s actually a point-and-pinch touchpadlike the screens of our smartphones. In the APIssaid touchpad does not even appear!
Why Meta would he hide this from us? We could imagine this useful functionality in navigation (menu scrolling) or imagine interactions in applications or even games. Several hypotheses support this discovery: the sensor may not be reliable enough to be activated, the software supposed to drive it may not yet be developed or Meta just didn’t have time to remove it at production time. In short, Meta may have taken care to rethink its strategy, in other words, to promise nothing and reveal only what is ready to be. To be continued…
If the Meta Quest 2 still interests you, know that you can afford it at the Fnac, Darty or Amazon for €449.99.