Oculus rift leap motion8/30/2023 ![]() ![]() The next step for Leap Motion is to see if it can get this tech in consumer headsets. "Plus, there's no learning curve," he joked. But for more exploratory uses, hands are so much better, since they let you gesticulate, point and pick up objects without a second thought. Of course, Buckwald said that controllers still have a place in virtual reality, especially for driving or combat-style games. "It just feels like you're playing with blocks." "Now your hands no longer feel like just an input method," said Kruse. I was impressed by how easy it was to get my hands in and start creating virtual objects. I also kept wishing the blocks felt "denser" so that it wasn't so easy to push them around. Of course, this is still strictly a demonstration, intended mostly to inspire developers. This demo, said Kruse, requires precise hand-tracking in addition to a robust graphic engine. ![]() What's more, I was able to turn a block on its corner with one hand and then spin it with the other. Then I knocked it down with a wave of my hand. As I kept doing it, I stacked one box after another, creating a tower. Instantly, I found that I was able to create blocks. Then he told me to do a "pinch out" gesture while moving my hands apart at the same time. He instructed me to put my thumb and forefinger together with both hands. Kruse then showed me a new demo the team has been working on, called Zero G. "It should still work, no matter how you grab it," Kruse said. Leap Motion has accounted for that, though. But not everyone grabs things in the same way, he said some people simply close their hand around the whole object, for example. "We want you to grab it like a real thing," said CEO and co-founder Michael Buckwald. "It has to behave exactly as you would hope." One way to do that is with visual and audio cues. "What we have to do is figure out the intent of your actions and translate that to the digital objects," he said. I'm not exactly "feeling" anything - and yet I'm treating this virtual object as if I'm actually holding it. For one thing, there's no tactile feedback - I'm not exactly "feeling" anything - and yet I'm treating this virtual object as if I'm actually holding it. That sounds like an easy task, but Caleb Kruse, who leads user testing at Leap Motion, tells me that the technology behind it is actually quite complex. ![]() The cage lit up and made a sound when I was successful. I pretended that I was actually picking up a physical object, bringing it to its destination and then letting it go. I was asked to select a single ball from a grid of virtual spheres and then drop it off in a cage. What came next, however, needed a touch more finesse, and it's one of a few new actions enabled by the Interaction Engine. Still, this was a demo that I've seen before, and it wasn't too difficult to figure out. There was hardly any latency - Leap Motion says the camera streams about 120 frames per second - which I found impressive. While wearing the headset, I was able to see my real hands in front of me (albeit in an infrared environment), at which point I could push virtual boxes out of my way just by waving them around. First, I wore what was essentially an Oculus Rift DK2 with one of Leap Motion's 3D motion sensors strapped to the front. I had a chance to try the latest demo for myself last week. Most recently, it's been working on something called the Interaction Engine, which aims to take things a step further: to make picking up objects in the digital world feel as natural as it does in the real one. But what if instead of hitting A to move a rock, you could just use your hands? That's exactly what Leap Motion, known for its hand-gesture control sensors, has been working on for the past few years. As immersive as virtual reality can be, you're still left holding awkwardly shaped controllers in your hands - a reminder that you're very much in the real world. ![]()
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