Leap Motion :combining Zeiss Head Tracking with Leap Motion hand recognition

So your Midichlorian count is lower than Jar Jar's granny's ? What hope is there for you old greying Padawan... once proud school playground/college dorm Jedi or Sith warrior now pegging all your Star Wars hopes on J J Abrams not Jonathan Fraking  Episode VII , VIII and IX ? You who dream of sending sparks of force lightning into your VR world from your AR hands....

Well today my  Leap Motion dev kit revision 5 .. arrived both cost and tax free , on time and it looks as close to final product as I can tell . 

Force Control Irrespective of Midichlorian count...

The Leap Motion is one PC motion controller that defies you not to use the word Force as an adjective,verb and noun every time you use it. Every time you use it you are conscious of all those times you wanted to test if the Force is strong in your family ..dreams shattered ever since George Lucas finally enlightened us as to actual source of  the all encompassing mystical energy that binds us together... Capitalism and a good franchise by your side..

Judge me by my size do you ? The LEAP is tiny, the size of a USB stick, just larger than a battery and weighing about the same ...

There is a gorgeous flat mini USB to USB cable too .. very cool 

The LEAP unit could easily be incorporated into a laptop trackpad or tablet bezel check out a size comparison between it and the Lenovo Trackpad below ..

These are my first moments with the LEAP and it is simple to set up, to fire it up at the moment you need to sign on as a developer ,download any updates and click on the LEAP tile in Windows 8 . The LEAP at present is not set up to take over your mouse or Metro wall control. This is a dev unit though so we are supposed to develop the code for this with the sdk..which is the point !  

Natural control :
As you can see I had no problems with the LEAP detecting movement, what was also impressive is how far I could lean back in my desk chair with the LEAP still detecting my hands. I read no instruction manual or guide, the whole ethos of this device is natural control .. of course developers have to come up with natural interface apps or control layers to apply to legacy apps. What I cannot stand about the old gen of motion controllers is all the unnatural crazy gestures ,waves and holds ..the LEAP is an opportunity for developers to make motion control mimic natural actions..Far more subtle actions . what if you are in are in Elderscrolls 6 and  your avatar is being asked how many dragon eggs you would like to purchase ?  you turn to look at the seller  using headtracking and raise three fingers , with the game recognising that you want 3 ..completely natural and so much more impressive than clicking on or thumb padding down to an option for 3 in an onscreen menu .. You could give silent hand signals and shoulder taps in Ghost Recon,Counter Strike GO or Call of Duty ...the fidelity of the LEAP will allow for this..something other motion detectors cannot.

Calibration

There was no need to calibrate the unit to my X220T's screen or for when I switched to using the Cinemizer OLED hmd , there is a very cool chopstick wielding calibration routine..but like the Carl Zeiss Cinemizer headtracker, really all I needed to do was plug the unit in. These devices represent the next generation of motion control and computer/user interfaces. As such little or no time is spent calibrating ..something which is a hall mark and barrier to every day use of the old gen of motion controllers like the PlayStation Move,Wii mote and of course Kinect.

Unlike the Cinemzer OLED headtracker which can mimic your mouse the second you plug it in ,with the LEAP there is still a software layer between you and the OS or apps you intend to control with leap motion, this is understandable as we are still at a dev stage.What I want to see is Microsoft think past the touch based interface of Windows 8 and start to incorporate VR control sets into Direct X. The same way they started to incorporate joystick input way back when.....

The LEAP will have specific apps developed for it and the fact that it does not default to mouse control emulation (yes there is an App for that if you wish) is a boon: 


Combining Zeiss Headtracking with Leap Motion hand recognition using the Cinemizer OLED hmd

Current hmd VR control interfaces whether the existing Cinemizer OLED headtracker or the yet to be released but now Jimmy "Knight's Crotch Gazing Incident" Fallon endorsed Oculus Rift are all handling VR control using head tracking combined with legacy controllers...but this not what people are expecting, they will want to reach out and touch those VR worlds.. 

The LEAP is the perfect way to do this using your hands ,being accurate and fast enough to recognize individual finger movement, palm curvature and a pencil or chopstick if you so wish. 

I aim to use the LEAP with hmds like the Cinemizer OLED, ST1080, combining  headtracker control with Leap Motion hand recognition and as soon as Palmer san gets my Oculus Rift dev unit to me with that too.

It should be a simple matter to use both in conjunction ..say to control a pilots field of view with the Zeiss Headtracker and to select individual targets ,switches and other virtual controls using the LEAP.. this is not just a device for catapulting aves after all..

And it is ...

Both the Zeiss headtracker and LEAP can be used simultaneously without conflict and without slowdown. I have only had time to do a simple test but there seems to be no issue in combining both forms of VR control . In the above video I use headtracking to move the onscreen cursor ..the white arrow ..whilst using the LEAP to detect my hand gestures , the video is recorded using FRAPS to capture the cursor movement and look for slow down in either control method when using both methods simultaneously.This is a simple test but you can glean that the LEAP hand tracking does not slow down or interfere with the Zeiss headtracker . So any fears you may have about the latency or lag from two motion controlled devices being used simultaneously should be assuaged. 

One of the things I asked the developers of the LEAP was if this would be possible ..and lo and behold it is.I intend to explore this further , this is just my first play woth the LEAP after all!There are so many possibilities ...  Using it with the transparent ST1080 display should prove very interesting ...though impossible to film..


We are at an interesting adjunct in the evolution of computer/user interface.. or VR in laymen's terms.

hardware : No dedicated gpus were used or necessary in any of my testing. Just an Intel HD3000 powered i7 Lenovo X220T .. After all VR is meant to free us from desktops and the cellars/bedrooms they traditionally inhabit... the LEAP worked fine using a 50 inch plasma. the 12.1 inch tablet screen and using the Cinemizer OLED hmd...

software : Windows 8 Pro likes the LEAP as you can see..

Evolution

Over the last year or so we have finally started to see how we will interface with new portable displayed and generated,wearable virtual and augmented worlds ..which admittedly someone has yet to code ...but are tantalisingly close to coming into being  .. VR and AR are here ..but operating systems have yet to catch up...and developers will have to transition users from legacy input devices to real VR and AR relevant input mechanisms..

I see combining use of  the LEAP Motion and Zeiss Cinemizer OLED head tracker  as part of this natural computer / user interface evolution. 

more to follow ...

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