Forum Discussion
Leap Motion Releasing Next Week
So Leap motion is finally coming out. I'm supposed to receive mine on Wednesday and I'm a little bit surprised at the lack of demos that implement Leap. I think I've only seen one so far. I understand...
I'm the developer of a launch application on Leap Motion's Airspace app store (Molecules, a Mac-based molecular viewer that I'm currently adding Rift support to), so I can provide another perspective on the device. I've had access to one as a developer for a few months, and I still think there's good potential for the Leap Motion controller as an input device to the Rift.
One of the biggest problems I see early on with this device is the attempt to port 2-D input methods to it, rather than exploiting the 3-D nature of the input. For example, many of the first applications on the store are ports of touchscreen-based games, and pointing and gestures for those were simply converted to the equivalent input with the Leap. This doesn't really give you anything that you didn't already have with the touchscreen, and you lose the limited tactile feedback you had with that earlier input method.
I did this same thing with my application, and wasn't really happy with it until I sat down and reworked the interactions to take advantage of the Z input you receive alongside the X and Y. I mapped scaling of a 3-D model to the Z movement of a hand, and rotation to the X and Y. When combined with two hands for translation of a model, I've found this to be superior in many ways to mouse or touchscreen-based input, and it allows me to navigate a structure in fewer actions than those 2-D input methods. I also believe that when I get Rift support operational, it will provide a great means of interacting with these models in 3-D space.
I did recently create a drop-in view for Apple's Scene Kit framework (a Mac-based framework for quick construction of 3-D scenes) as an open source project:
https://github.com/BradLarson/OculusRiftSceneKit
and one of my sample applications in there uses Leap Motion input to move two crude representations of hands that cast their own light source:
I'm still excited about the integration of the Oculus Rift with Leap Motion, because the Leap still delivers the best 3-D hand and finger tracking fidelity I've seen (I've tested a few of the different depth cameras out there). It also has a very well written SDK, and the reliability of hand and finger tracking has increases significantly over time with their software updates. I think a lot of people have been trying to use it for something it's not well suited for, like a mouse replacement.
One of the biggest problems I see early on with this device is the attempt to port 2-D input methods to it, rather than exploiting the 3-D nature of the input. For example, many of the first applications on the store are ports of touchscreen-based games, and pointing and gestures for those were simply converted to the equivalent input with the Leap. This doesn't really give you anything that you didn't already have with the touchscreen, and you lose the limited tactile feedback you had with that earlier input method.
I did this same thing with my application, and wasn't really happy with it until I sat down and reworked the interactions to take advantage of the Z input you receive alongside the X and Y. I mapped scaling of a 3-D model to the Z movement of a hand, and rotation to the X and Y. When combined with two hands for translation of a model, I've found this to be superior in many ways to mouse or touchscreen-based input, and it allows me to navigate a structure in fewer actions than those 2-D input methods. I also believe that when I get Rift support operational, it will provide a great means of interacting with these models in 3-D space.
I did recently create a drop-in view for Apple's Scene Kit framework (a Mac-based framework for quick construction of 3-D scenes) as an open source project:
https://github.com/BradLarson/OculusRiftSceneKit
and one of my sample applications in there uses Leap Motion input to move two crude representations of hands that cast their own light source:
I'm still excited about the integration of the Oculus Rift with Leap Motion, because the Leap still delivers the best 3-D hand and finger tracking fidelity I've seen (I've tested a few of the different depth cameras out there). It also has a very well written SDK, and the reliability of hand and finger tracking has increases significantly over time with their software updates. I think a lot of people have been trying to use it for something it's not well suited for, like a mouse replacement.