Leap Motion Controller

[frosty]

A motion controller like Kinect with the accuracy of Move (accurate to the sub-millimeter level)... Interesting.

Leap, which comprises both a small USB input device and a sophisticated software platform, is expected to cost $70. But while users will have to wait until early next year to get their hands on it, what the company is showing today seems likely to get developers and users in a wide range of industries very, very excited.
By now, most people have seen Kinect in action. The Microsoft system has become a huge success by allowing developers to make games and other software that let people control what's on their screens with their bodies. That's great for dancing, fighting, and sports games, plus many others, but Kinect's ability to recognize motion ends at users' hands.
Leap, by comparison, can sense motion down to the most subtle movements of a finger, which the company says is 200 times more sensitive than anything else on the market. The system creates a "three-dimensional interaction space" of four cubic feet and is more precise and responsive than a touchscreen or a mouse, and just as reliable as a keyboard.
That means everyone from game designers to surgeons to architects and engineers may soon have a host of revolutionary applications that will soon be coming their way.
In a demonstration to CNET, Leap Motion CTO David Holz showed how the Leap is adept at a range of functions, such as:
- Navigating an operating system or browsing Web pages with the flick of a finger
- Finger-pinching to zoom in on maps
- Letting engineers interact with a 3D model of clay
- Precision drawing in either two- or three-dimensions
- Manipulating complex 3D data visualizations
- Playing games, including those that require very "fast-twitch" control
- Signing digital documents by writing in air
But that's just the beginning. Leap Motion, which announced $12.75 million in Series A funding led by Andy Miller of Highland Capital Partners earlier this month, decided from the get-go to make its technology into an ecosystem that would support a large number of third-party applications, as opposed to trying to build and popularize those apps itself.
"We want to create as vibrant a developer ecosystem as possible, and we're reaching out to developers in all sorts of" fields, CEO Michael Buckwald told CNET:
We want there to be world-changing applications that fundamentally transform how people interact with their operating system or browse the Web.... The goal is to fundamentally transform how people interact with computers and to do so in the same way that the mouse did, which means that the transformation affects everyone, both from the most basic use case all the way up to the most advanced use cases you can imagine for computing technology.
App Store
When Microsoft launched the Kinect, the device was a closed system that the software giant intended to keep under tight reins. The company charged for access to a developers kit, and quickly earned the enmity of the hacker community. That led to the now-famous Kinect hacking movement, which eventually forced Microsoft to accept that people wanted to build their own applications on top of the system.
Leap Motion decided from the beginning that turning to developers was the way to go. Now, the company envisions an app store where users who have bought the Leap can go to purchase a very wide range of applications built for the device.
"We believe that ultimately, the sheer number of use cases for this technology are so great that the value can only be realized by making it open," Buckwald said. "So think what would have happened if the mouse had been initially been released as a closed technology. The impact would have been a tiny, tiny percentage of what the impact was because it was an open system that anyone could develop for."
Based on word of mouth and a few low-key announcements about the company, Leap Motion has already gotten more than 1,000 inquiries from developers, and the company expects that number to grow "exponentially" now that word is out about the technology.
The company's plan is to sift through the initial applicants and "start off with a group of diverse developers ranging from people that want to build things for medicine, and consumers and gaming and engineers and science and research and education," Buckwald said.
Starting today, Leap Motion will be looking for a few hundred developers, but will quickly expand the program by sending out between 15,000 and 20,000 free developer kits. Buckwald said the company is immediately starting to take applications for that program, "and we're going to ask developers what kinds of things they envision building and from that, we're going to make decisions about the order on which we bring developers into the program."
It's clear that while Leap Motion considers its technology quite different than that of Kinect, it also hopes that developers who have been frustrated by Microsoft's approach will see the Leap as a much more attractive platform. Says Buckwald:
Those developers are running up against a wall, because the Kinect is a fantastic device for dancing games, but it's hundreds of times less accurate than this technology and not capable of tracking fingers, so it's not a very developer-friendly platform for right now. And we want to provide a way for those developers to use a technology that will let them build applications that are much more complex, much richer, and much easier for consumers, as well as those high-end users to use so that they can do more powerful things.
And while the Leap seems likely to move the field of hands-free 3D motion control forward significantly, Buckwald explained that technology could have existed for years, save for the fact that no one had cracked the math to make it possible. "It's not as if we're using lots of processing power or some new hardware that just came on to the market," he said. "This is really about a fundamental scientific breakthrough, many Eureka moments that (Holz) stumbled through over four or five years of research."

[TimmyJ]

Open! All of the best features of Kinect on an open platform = bi-winning

[OmniStalgic]

very cool stuff....

PS4?

[AC!D]

Ironic that this is exactly what MS promised kinect could do at their reveal conference.

[Segitz]

Wham there it is?

[AC!D]

Honestly i think the motion fad is done for now. I think Nintendo have done the right thing going for the I pad fad. I see portables like Vita becoming both portable tablet and controller in years to comefor PS4. MS could add their own as a kinect like peripheral later assuming they dont launch with a tablet controller from the get go.

[frosty]

I think this device has the capability to change that. It has accuracy that beats any mouse out there, so for PC use it is perfect. It merges the worlds of traditional computing and tablet computing, allowing the same swipe and pinch zoom functionality we're all used to on tablets and phones with a traditional PC. As for gaming, I can't see any real noticeable lag in there, so there are a lot of possibilities that this device unlocks where kinect fell flat on it's face.

If this device were used as an add on to a traditional controller setup, it would be the ultimate input setup for gaming.

[AC!D]

I have tried my best to get into motion controls both with Nintendo and Sony but after a hard days work its just not fun playing motion games. It will always be great for the kids but at my age really no thanks. I dont mind indulging in a good MC game like Dead Space Extraction or Sorcery once in a while but me not having the energy to play Datura for the past week which is only a two hour game speaks volumes. After work and gym i just want my trusty old Dualshock. This evolving into a tablet i can live with. Playing only MC games for the rest of my life i cant. The general consensus on forums seems to be the same for most gamers if you check out the MC game threads. This will still only ever be a casual device in my opinion no matter how accurate it is.

[Viper]

I think this device has the capability to change that. It has accuracy that beats any mouse out there, so for PC use it is perfect. It merges the worlds of traditional computing and tablet computing, allowing the same swipe and pinch zoom functionality we're all used to on tablets and phones with a traditional PC. As for gaming, I can't see any real noticeable lag in there, so there are a lot of possibilities that this device unlocks where kinect fell flat on it's face.

If this device were used as an add on to a traditional controller setup, it would be the ultimate input setup for gaming.

Might have just been that specific demo but watch the triangles portion again. The input lag is really bad there.

[frosty]

I'm not really seeing much, it just waits for both hands to do the pinching gesture before movement activates.

[Viper]

I'm not really seeing much, it just waits for both hands to do the pinching gesture before movement activates.

Watch the entire triangle segment again. Specifically the portions that aren't using 2 hands. Major lag.

[TimmyJ]

I wasn't paying much attention to just how much, but there was certainly some lag at moments in the video.

I reckon it's just a side-effect of a 30fps camera though. A bit of lag doesn't matter when just proving the concept.

[Domination]

Watch the entire triangle segment again. Specifically the portions that aren't using 2 hands. Major lag.

It seems more related to his pinch pulling motion. If it had any 'noticeable' lag, i think we would have easily seen it with his finger gestures. Kinect is so laggy where you can see it everywhere. There is no, well, it can possibly be lag here or there. So something like this would definitely perform much better as an input device for games.

[Viper]

It seems more related to his pinch pulling motion. If it had any 'noticeable' lag, i think we would have easily seen it with his finger gestures. Kinect is so laggy where you can see it everywhere. There is no, well, it can possibly be lag here or there. So something like this would definitely perform much better as an input device for games.

Please watch the segment again. I am seeing large lag after he moves his entire arm. Not a delay because of his pinching motions. Watch the whole segment, not just the first few seconds of the triangle segment.

[Domination]

Please watch the segment again. I am seeing large lag after he moves his entire arm. Not a delay because of his pinching motions. Watch the whole segment, not just the first few seconds of the triangle segment.

Perhaps you missed my point.

His finger gestures (long before the triangle video) are being tracked with no noticeable lag at all. When we see a video of the pinch and pull video, only THEN do we notice lag. My point is, this lag may be due to HIS pinch and pulling motions because had lag been present, we would have noticed it in the other demos with is finger/hand motions.

With Kinect, it didn't take for us to notice lag in a specific area -- especially a hand geature, before deeming Kenect as a laggy device because it was laggy everywhere. With Leap, because we only see lag here but nowhere else sorta challenegs the fact that it may have noticeable lag. Thus me believing that it may be the user or even the demo rather than the device

I hope that clears things up a bit.

[Segitz]

This isn't Kinect, though... to me, this is rather comparable to a touchscreen with depth. Kinect is more elaborate in different areas, yet less precise if used like this.

I very much doubt that this system can mimic current Kinect games (not that they would want to, though).

[Viper]

Perhaps you missed my point.

His finger gestures (long before the triangle video) are being tracked with no noticeable lag at all. When we see a video of the pinch and pull video, only THEN do we notice lag. My point is, this lag may be due to HIS pinch and pulling motions because had lag been present, we would have noticed it in the other demos with is finger/hand motions.

What's the first thing I said regarding this whole thing?
"Might have just been that specific demo but watch the triangles portion again. The input lag is really bad there."

[Smokey]

Honestly i think the motion fad is done for now. I think Nintendo have done the right thing going for the I pad fad. I see portables like Vita becoming both portable tablet and controller in years to comefor PS4. MS could add their own as a kinect like peripheral later assuming they dont launch with a tablet controller from the get go.

i really hope not...

[AC!D]

i really hope not...

Why though? It could be cool.

The VITA screen becomes you secondary touchscreen for quickselect items or commands. PS4 can stream the game to your VITA when you arent near your TV or the family need to use it. You can take your COD profile with you and carry on playing with that transfarring sysem when you are away
on holiday with 3G. Hell the possibilitis are endless really especially if services like onlive and Gakai come to PS. I think those could benefit the VITA way more than the PS4.

While i dont think Nintendo did a good job explaining all this its still a good idea. Also it would probably just be an option to use your VITA. Sony have never been a company that forces stuff like move down our throats. It would be great for those who want it. Im willing to give it a shot. It defenitely sounds like a better idea for core than the Wii ever was.

[Smokey]

if its useable for people thats cool but as long as Dualshock is the norm ill be happy