The PTC build of Quest v71 includes a passthrough cutout for any keyboard the 头显 sees while you’re in your virtual home.
What Is the Public Test Channel (PTC)?
The Public Test Channel (PTC) is Meta Quest’s beta release channel. If you opt in, your 头显 receives a pre-release build of each Quest system software, now technically called Horizon OS, version.
Note that there are often features in the eventual stable version not present in the PTC, and occasionally (but very rarely) features or changes in the PTC don’t make it to the stable version.
Currently, Quest’s Horizon OS can track a limited number of connected Bluetooth keyboards while in immersive VR mode, and it will render the keyboard as a virtual object aligned to its real position.
But attempting to model every possible Bluetooth keyboard would be a losing battle, so in the Public Test Channel build of v71 of Horizon OS, Meta seems to be taking a different approach.
In PTC v71, as first spotted by Fouz Reda, the system will instead track any keyboard within its view, even those not connected. When your hands are near the keyboard it will show it as a passthrough cutout, and when they aren’t it will simply show the bounds of the keyboard as a white rectangle.
Confusingly called Keyboard Tracking, this new approach has the benefit of supporting any keyboard, including the keyboard of your laptop or PC.
Apple added a somewhat similar feature called Keyboard Breakthrough to visionOS 2, though it only works with a connected Apple Magic Keyboard, and doesn’t have the white outline.
Keyboard Tracking is on by default, and seems to replace the previous tracked keyboards feature if enabled. So if you have a supported tracked keyboard and prefer seeing a virtual version of it (as I do personally) go to the Keyboard tab of the Devices section of Settings to turn Keyboard Tracking off.
We should note that it’s possible the feature won’t make it from the PTC to the actual v71 release, but most features of this magnitude do, so we expect to see it roll out sometime this month.
