

Leap - aes
http://leapmotion.com/

======
jaysonelliot
Please, for the love of Jef Raskin and Henry Dreyfuss and Don Norman and all
that is human factors, no.

The film version of Minority Report was _not_ a model for practical or usable
interface design. Millions of years of evolution have built our brains and
bodies for interacting with things that provide physical feedback when we
touch them. Waving a pencil in the air, "manipulating" an invisible item and
looking for visual feedback from a screen, these are not good experiences.
Even if you discount the "gorilla arm syndrome" that StavrosK quite rightly
points out here, the fatigue of trying to perform fine and accurate motion
without physical stimuli for your hands and fingers to respond to is
significant.

I'm sorry to be a negative voice in the face of innovation, but this really
does feel like a technology in search of a problem. What worries me greatly is
that it has a remarkably high "cool factor" that would be excellent in short
demos, and could be easily pitched to companies looking for a flashy feature
to get a leg up on the competition. We were saddled with some dubious
decisions at the dawn of the GUI age, and we're just starting to lose them as
we enter the Direct Manipulation age of interfaces. Please don't let this
concept of feedback-free hand gestures become a paradigm that we're stuck with
in the future.

~~~
robg
As an embodied cognition guy, I disagree here pretty strongly. Gestures are a
powerful form of communication - consider deaf signers, scuba divers, even in
time sensitive operations like military and sports. Gestures likely have a
deeper evolutionary history than spoken language too. They are intuitive.
Babies mimic long before they speak or manipulate.

~~~
jaysonelliot
That's an interesting perspective that I hadn't thought of before.

The usual approach to a 3D gestural interface is the kind of thing that's
shown in the video for Leap—writing in the air, using mimed actions in space
to represent manipulation of objects on a 2D screen, et cetera.

Gestures as an abstraction, like sign language or even the everyday hand
gestures we use like flipping the bird, the "A-OK" sign, and such make a lot
more sense. If you move away from the idea of using hand waving as a stand-in
for direct manipulation of objects, and look at gestures as a form of
communication, it's a whole different ball game.

Thanks for that. I still look at the demo video for Leap with fear and
loathing, but using that same hardware for a communicative gesture system like
you suggest is exciting indeed. Now I'm going to be distracted all day
thinking about ways to incorporate hand signs into a UI.

~~~
robg
The big question for me is whether gestures began as a proto-language.
Consider mimicry and the use of tools in social learning. That's animal
cognition too.

------
tibbon
There's too much focus here on the assumption that this will be used as a
full-time computing input device. I don't think anyone is realistically
advocating banishment of all keyboard/mice to the netherworld.

Let's be more creative than that. Think about using it as an alternate input
in spaces that a physical keyboard/mouse isn't appropriate, and also 'short
term computing'.

Will this replace input on your workstation? I doubt it- but what about a
large map that's installed in a public place? What about some sort of restroom
or medical computing device where you'd rather not touch the surface that
someone else just touched? You're not going to sit there 12 hours a day.
You're going to pull up the map in the hospital and zoom/pan around on it. Why
do we need another surface to clean? And in 15 seconds- you're done. No
gorilla arm syndrome, no pain, and no real learning curve.

~~~
skizm
Ultimately no this will not replace the keyboard and mouse but these guys seem
to think it will. Check out the headline on the _about_ page:

> Say goodbye to your mouse and keyboard.

~~~
rprospero
To be fair, I remember seeing a mouse demoed in the mid eighties and the
fellow at the demo explaining that you'd never need a keyboard again. He then
proceeded to write a short sentence by using the mouse to click on letters on
the screen.

I think that every new HID comes with a marketer promising to get rid of your
keyboard.

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StavrosK
Whenever I see something like this, I immediately think of gorilla arm
syndrome. There's a reason I was saying they will never become widespread when
all my friends were screaming about Minority Report-style interfaces (ever
since Minority Report).

~~~
dsirijus
You are implying hand waving all around with such use case.

I, for instance, imagine it as replacement for trackpad - I type happily on my
keyboard, and I just do some slight gestures for scrolling, switching,
closing, minimizing and pointing. And all while keeping my hands close to home
row. It's even in similar form factor as trackpads!

I don't know why everyone thinks it will be like signaling on an airport or
doing any strenous activity at all.

It's a very delicate device for very delicate input.

And that's all not counting cases where wide space hand usage would be
extremely useful (3D modelling, directing a virtual orchestra, interfacing
with kiosks...)

~~~
esolyt
Why is it more difficult to do those gestures on the trackpad? The trackpad is
closer to your keyboard and it is very quick to switch between the two.

~~~
dsirijus
No. Trackpad device may be close to keyboard, but Leap is covering your entire
working space. I.e. keyboard actually may be completely unplugged and Leap
could detect what are you typing.

------
quarterto
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4002418>

------
defdac
I'm currently learning Blender. It's an open source 3D-modeling program with
one of the most non-intuitive GUIs ever created. It's like the Vim/Emacs of
3D-creation. Being able to just grab a 3D-object with your hands and kneed it
to the shape you want would be freakishly amazing.

------
pestaa
More than one comment below mentioned the use of this device for 3D modelling.
There are certainly scenarios when an artist could use LeapMotion, like
sculpting and painting, but the actual modelling part is heavily keyboard-
supported.

I image you'd need both hands to replace two mouse buttons and a scroller, and
to me that seems to break the deal.

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lywald
Seems developers can candidate for a _free_ Leap+SDK if they like your project
idea and think you can deliver.

>How can I get a free developer kit?

>We’re distributing thousands of kits to qualified developers, [...] register
to get the SDK and a free Leap device first, and then wow us.

Apply here: <https://live.leapmotion.com/developers.html>

I like the small size and reasonable price. Might be cool as a 3rd input
device, or for specialized terminals.

------
neya
> Say goodbye to your mouse and keyboard.

This single line is enough to help me see through their flawed assumptions.
The keyboard and mice aren't going away anytime soon, just because these guys
have found a way to integrate gestures with computers. I personally hate the
Applesque marketing promising users to 'Own the future'. Gesture technology
has been here for long and I don't see it being the future by replacing the
mouse and the keyboard. Think about developers like us...no developer would
find it useful, because we need to code _efficiently_ , which is and never
will be possible with gesture technology.

So, from a developer's perspective, this is something intended to be too cool,
but fails to understand the basic underlying principle of the purpose of a
keyboard and a mouse. Maybe, this would appeal to ultra Hi-Fi executives who
want to flaunt to the world a new way of using their Powerpoint slideshows,
but not the common man/developer who owns an average computer (Something like
a c2d).

I was honestly expecting this to have some features like the Kinect, which
developers have hacked to use it as a motion-capture system, especially for
use in creating Animated movies (which is awesome because a standard decent
mo-cap setup will cost you atleast $5k). This gadget is unfortunately too
basic and solves a very small problem that no one really cares about, IMO.

------
kleiba
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4004420>

~~~
vesky
I don't know why but reposting seems to happen a lot on HackerNews. It's not
the fact that they get reposted that's bugging me but the fact that the same
people upvote them. Why would you still upvote something if you know you've
seen it before on HN? It eludes me.

~~~
jurre
Probably because they haven't seen it before. This is the first time I've see
this posted.

~~~
kleiba
I wouldn't really say that it _bothers_ me. I posted the link to the above
discussion because I think if someone comes to the comment section they might
be interested in it.

But it certainly wouldn't hurt to do a quick HN search before posting a new
submission.

~~~
ColinWright

      > ... it certainly wouldn't hurt to do a quick
      > HN search before posting a new submission.
    

Won't happen. I've been saying it literally for years, and I can tell you now,
it won't happen.

I implemented the first-phase of a semi-automated duplicate detector to help
people find previous submissions, and I got hate mail for it. Some people are
actively against duplicate detection.

~~~
jamesbritt
Plus dupe detection is trivial to defeat. Basically, the current set-up works
in favor of people gaming it.

------
_lj
I don't think anybody, including Leap, thinks the keyboard and mouse are going
anywhere. Also, this isn't minority report. If leap can deliver on the
sensitivity of the input, then small, precise gestures can be made without
moving your hands from the keyboard. That makes it useful in cases where
switching from the keyboard to a mouse isn't fast enough for my taste.

I can envision opening certain applications with a gesture (save you from
typing the name into quicksilver or finding and double clicking on the icon).
Tasks that you repeat over and over could be assigned to a gesture with great
effect, like swiping a finger left and right to change windows.

3D editing could be interesting, where you move an invisible object in 3
dimensions with your hand. Anybody who's done 3d modeling or game development
in unity can attest that a mouse and keyboard are limited in 3 dimensions.

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ricardobeat
Hmm. I feel like I'm in _that other news site_ with all the reposts.

~~~
alexmunroe
I would imagine the number of people accessing the site from different
timezones is likely to be the reason for it, an article can quite rapidly
disappear from the front page before someones had the chance to see it.

------
tomelders
First time I've seen this. Obviously the first time a lot of other people have
seen it too, hence it making it all the way to front page.

Anyhoot, I can't deny it, this is very interesting.

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Ave
I think this has great potential for use in conjunction with wearable
computing such as Google Glass. I'm not sure how the current interface for
Glass works, but I imagine it's based on voice input and possibly some buttons
on the unit itself.

Imagine wearing a smaller Leap controller on your wrist - you would be able to
use gestures to control the Glass and mostly likely interact much more
intuitively with your surroundings as seen through Glass.

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w0utert
Can anybody explain how this works, ie: the technology behind it? The page
itself doesn't disclose much more than that it uses some kind of secret
algorithms to track hands and fingers, but I'd be interested in what kind of
sensors and processing are used, and how such a small box can track 3 degrees
of freedom so accurately. How can this work so well compared to the crude
tracking that Kinect does with 3 cameras and a laser projector?

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uvTwitch
I one day hope to be able to close an application on my computer by showing it
my middle finger. It would make ragequits much more satisfying.

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JabavuAdams
I wonder what the constraints on the background are? If it's not too fussy,
then hang one of these around your neck and hook it up to an Oculus RIFT VR.

Immersive VR + hand-tracking == ????

~~~
revx
1\. Immersive VR 2\. Hand Tracking 3\. Profit.

You've solved it! Congrats!

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sathishmanohar
I can imagine so many possibilities for this technology, but, please don't
assume, people will write in space in the future, its just not happening :)

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MatthewPhillips
So... does it run Android?

