The paper examines the methods used in hand gesture recognition and the influence of external factors on the obtained result. In the beginning, the popular methods are divided into two groups. These are the methods using a 3D model of the hand and those based on appearance. The first group includes those that represent the wrist as a set of degrees of freedom. The second group includes techniques based on skin color and using the characteristic features of the hand. In the second part of the paper, an analysis of the data obtained from the hand gesture recognition, obtained under the influence of various factors such as distance, illumination, clothing, background or the presence of an accessory, is carried out.