

Skeletal Tracking Beta - Matetricks
https://developer.leapmotion.com/

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bravura
I hacked the Leap controller at the SF Music Hack day. My team and I built an
app called leapJ: multiplayer DJ'ing with your body.
([https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/music-hack-day-
san-f...](https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/music-hack-day-san-
francisco-2014/hacks/leapj))

Leap is a great little device. My main complaint is that the API is too low-
level. We would just fire events roughly every 20ms, in a markovian
(stateless) way. For this reason, the instrument control was somewhat janky,
because we didn't have the time to de-jitter hand paths / infer a tracking
spline.

My wishlist for leap is:

* Higher level APIs, that apply the sort of sophisticated filtering and tracking that many people are liable to roll themselves.

* Multiple leap devices per computer. Needing a separate computer per leap is a big barrier to working with several leaps at once.

* ARM support. I'd love to have a RaspberryPI for each leap. Then they would be truly mobile. For right now, I think I'm going to have to get a mini ITX motherboard,

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sitkack
You need a smoothing library. I welcome our low level access, you can always
pile what you need on top, the converse is not possible.

What would be nice is some intelligence pushed down into the Leap, like the
ability to run Lua or JVM code directly so that realtime multidevice is
possible.

~~~
scott_karana
I think he meant _augmenting_ your API with higher-level stuff, but not
removing any of the low level access. :-)

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dignati
This is amazing! I bought the LeapMotion a while ago and forgot it soon enough
because the hand, finger and gesture recognition was very basic and didn't
feel natural (at least to me and my friends who tried it). Now they push the
boundaries of that small, old piece of hardware with a software update and
show what it's really capable of. I can only imagine how impressive this must
feel when you use it with an oculus rift and interact with a virtual reality
environment. The sticking-blocks-together example is just the beginning of
what's possible.

EDIT: Okay, I tried some of the examples and am excited! The recognition part
is excellent, I can throw things up in the air and catch them again, all very
natural. What's missing though are good physics. Objects glitch around my
hands, wiggle mid air, get stretched even when they should be solid. But I
guess that's Unity's problem, not LeapMotion's.

~~~
batmansbelt
Yeah it's basically a holodeck. Exciting stuff. It's funny how on the shows
the holo-deck was always something that took a whole lot of electricity so
they could only have one or two on the ship, and you'd have to book time on
it. It looks like in real life holodecks are much less power hungry than
faster than light starship engines, and that more people desire their own
holo-deck than want to go to space. Makes sense. Entertainment has
historically been much more popular than exploration.

~~~
_Adam
A holodeck is just another means of exploration. Spatial exploration (be it
space, underwater, etc) is not really that interesting. If we went to Mars
right now, we'd be really, really, really bored. There's nothing there except
rocks.

Using the Oculus Rift (and associated VR technologies like the Leap), I can
experience all sorts of amazing things that I've never experienced before.
Like fighting aliens for the survival of humanity. Or jumping through floating
sky scrapers. And I can create new experiences for others.

Exploration has never been more popular. It's just moved from the spatial to
the conceptual.

~~~
batmansbelt
Honest question? Why is the first example use case always killing? I'd
probably be a lot more into video games if there was anything beyond Mario
maturity games that wasn't a murder fantasy.

I don't want to fight aliens. I'd love to interact with real aliens though.
That's an exploration that you could never have virtually.

~~~
_Adam
I wish it wasn't, but that's just what's already there. Two reasons why:

1\. Killing is a very easy interaction to implement. It's much simpler to make
an AI that tries to kill you than one that tries to engage you in meaningful
conversation.

2\. The intensity of violence compensates for the disassociation that resulted
from the interface. In other words, you were just watching the game on the
monitor. You didn't real feel "there" like you do with VR. What I find, is
when I'm playing violent games with VR, it's less enjoyable and more
stressful. Fighting becomes an unpleasant necessity.

I think as the technology progresses, we'll see more games focus much less on
violence. Like that Voyager bridge demo for the Oculus Rift. If someone made
the whole ship with the same level of detail, and had no people or enemies or
violence, I could still spend many hours just walking around and exploring,
and I would probably enjoy it more than shooting things.

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dalek2point3
I wrote a case about the Leap for my MIT Entrepreneurship class and
interviewed a bunch of the founding team.

These guys are great -- but they still havent found their killer app. Thats
partly because the tech is ahead of its time -- but the vision is clearly
excellent.

David Holz the founder is the brains behind this, has been working on a better
UI since he was literally a kid in Florida. See:
[http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-24/david-
holzs-...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-24/david-holzs-leap-
motion-wants-to-kill-the-mouse)

Their CEO is the founder of Quattro Wireless founder, an ex-Apple exec Andy
Miller who is a really smart guy. SO they do really have a good team, and lots
of VC backing.

Perhaps this new skeletal tracking stuff will help this really catch on. Best
of luck to LEAP!

~~~
higherpurpose
It seems like the type of company that _needs_ to be acquired for its
technology, by someone with not just the vision for the technology, but also
the funds, and perhaps the _platform_ for it, to really take advantage of it.

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ortusdux
It looks like it is time to literally dust off my leap motion.

~~~
Goopplesoft
I'm wondering where I'll find mine...

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heuermh
I just updated my LeapMotion library for Processing [0] with support for the
new LeapMotion SDK. Mine provides a thin wrapper over the SDK; there are
several other libraries for Processing with higher level APIs (e.g. additional
gestures).

[0] [https://github.com/heuermh/leap-motion-
processing](https://github.com/heuermh/leap-motion-processing)

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FajitaNachos
The new version is really a step up. Props to the dev team for being
responsive as well. I sent them an issue during the beta, and they had pushed
a fix a few days later. There's still glitches here and there, but those
usually result from one hand being on top of the other or something similar.

I'm excited to see where they go with this. I'm not sold on using the leap for
my everyday computing tasks, but I think there are some great applications for
it.

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thenomad
People who have a Leap: does this work as well, in terms of tracking the
hands, as it appears to in the demo?

If so, I may have to buy a Leap...

~~~
_Adam
Yup. It works just like that. Now, keep in mind that it's not going to work
perfectly ALL the time. If you get into complex occlusion cases it may not be
able to reconstruct the skeleton perfectly.

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knewter
Big props to Leap Motion on the skeletal tracking. It was very easy to use.
Took me around an hours to dust off my 3d trig and build this:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX7pQlB6-IY&feature=youtu.be

So easy to use...

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cyrusaf
How is this technology so much more accurate than Microsoft's Kinect? That's
awesome! I love seeing the new guy develop a better product than a old giant.

~~~
angersock
Very, _very_ different problem domains and technology.

Consider: how much variation is there between bodies and hands? How much
larger is the work envelope of the Kinect vs the Leap? How much more
information do you get from the Kinect vs the Leap (depth buffer, positional
audio, etc.)?

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zvrba
Wow. Could this be used as a form of biofeedback when trying to learn (or
improve) complicated movements in sports?

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thenomad
It's hands-only, so there's a limited range of movements it can track.

However, if you apply the same question to a Kinect 2 or, say, another full-
body mocap suit, then the answer is _definitely_.

One of these days when I have free time (no time soon, then) I shall write a
routine for my mocap suits to track and give realtime feedback on various
martial arts techniques.

~~~
zvrba
> to track and give realtime feedback on various martial arts techniques

Hehe, that was exactly the application I was thinking of :)

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malkia
Wondering if this would be useful for 3D level editing/navigating - or simply
for our model browser... hmm...

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Jemaclus
This looks like it would be fantastic for teaching sign language...

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batmansbelt
I wonder if there's a PHP library?

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cyrusaf
You could use JS to make AJAX calls to PHP, since it has a JS library.

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jpeg_hero
don't your deltoids get tired?

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dignati
If I am sitting, my hands get tired very soon. However, if I stand up it works
very well for me. I guess you get used to it anyway.

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mauricesvay
Meh.

