
Leap Motion Goes Mobile - SkarredGhost
http://blog.leapmotion.com/mobile-platform/
======
harperlee
So my brother gifted me a Leap Motion last year. I tried it for some time but
it is not really very useful, and tracking is not that great.

It seems that the new version of the software, Orion
([https://developer.leapmotion.com/get-
started](https://developer.leapmotion.com/get-started)), made things better.
But it has been in beta, and Windows-only, since at least last February... and
the list of "known issues" doesn't seem to shorten over the months.

The gadget is now again in its box, where it has been for some time now. It's
sad to see that they pivoted into VR based interaction, completely abandoned
their current users in the process, and are now only working on the new VR
version.

~~~
leapmotion_alex
The known issues don't entirely disappear, but their relative impact does
shrink. And Orion is largely retro-compatible with desktop mode.

~~~
harperlee
...but I have a Mac, and thus I'm stuck with the pre-orion software.

On the other hand, the "known issues" section is Orion-specific, not a
previous version list that Orion improves upon.

------
sequence7
Seems like this story should really be linking to the Leap Motion blog with
the announcement.

[http://blog.leapmotion.com/mobile-
platform/](http://blog.leapmotion.com/mobile-platform/)

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we've updated the link from
[https://skarredghost.wordpress.com/2016/12/05/leap-motion-
go...](https://skarredghost.wordpress.com/2016/12/05/leap-motion-goes-
mobile/).

------
fillskills
This could be something really awesome. There is a lot of space for a new
method of interaction with software that is independent of voice and
touchscreen. Specially with AR and VR. If done right, this could be as big of
a game changer. Possibly as big as the Scroll Wheel or Touch screen. Here is
an older but related TED video that speaks to some interesting use cases:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potent...](https://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology)

------
apoorvaj
I played around with an early devkit of the Leap Motion when it first came
out. At the time, there were quite a few issues with the technology.

\- The company was being overly secretive about the tech behind the hardware,
and as a result was exposing very little useful stuff in the API.

\- There is something inherently dissatisfying about waving your hands in thin
air to control something. The lack of any haptic feedback and no way to
ascertain the vision frustum of the device made it very uncomfortable to use.

\- Like a lot of startups, Leap Motion wanted to become a platform instead of
being a hardware company. This made using it a total pain, having to go
through their app store to accomplish even basic tasks. This also leads to a
rather disingenuous customer-company relationship, as the company is not
interested in just selling you their hardware, but also wants to control the
way you use the hardware.

The entire thing would be far more appealing and hackable if they opened up
their API and allowed the developer to access the raw data - depthmaps, point
clouds, motion vectors - whatever's available internally. Sadly, this does not
seem to be happening.

~~~
leapmotion_alex
Four years is a long time. Our API is quite open, and we provided public
access to the raw image data back in early 2014. As for our App Store and App
Home, sure, we built out a curated app ecosystem. Developers have always been
free to publish on other platforms with no licensing fees, and we've actually
built out a Developer Gallery (shortly to be just "Gallery") where downloading
just the executables or jumping to Steam is the norm.

------
throwaway98237
The original Leap Motion was awesome. But there was no adoption of it. It
would have been great to see it included in laptops, for instance. Just my
opinion, this is because, well, the same reason there are all sorts of
arbitrary names for command line switches. The people that could build this
already have something that works for them, so why spend time building out a
whole new interface for other folks, average folks. Same reason why OSS has
been great for programmers, not so great for consumers. Majority of the effort
has gone to tooling and platforms, not to the non-technical user side of
things.

~~~
munchbunny
I was one of the pre-orderers for the original Leap Motion. I played around
with making apps for it within the first few weeks.

It was pretty bad. I was fighting the API the whole time because its post-
processed palm and finger positioning data was noisy and and error-prone, and
it didn't have a raw mode. The API would frequently lose track of individual
fingers. You also couldn't do any hand gestures that involved your palm
pointing horizontally instead of up/down because it would lose track of your
occluded fingers. It also had issues tracking fingers when you held them
together (as if you were going to karate-chop something). It's just too many
quirks to deal with if you're trying to do hand position and gesture input.

Maybe it's improved since then, but after one day back around the initial
launch I basically gave up on the tech for hand tracking, deciding that it was
just not a good approach.

~~~
throwaway98237
I bought 5 I was so excited. I ended up selling 4 after realizing that they
were gonna require more time than I'd expected. I need to go back and see if
they've since improved their platform.

~~~
leapmotion_alex
Head writer at Leap Motion here, so take what I say with a grain of salt. But
it's like night and day.

~~~
munchbunny
What has changed?

It's clearly a much more mature company now, so I'm genuinely curious even if
I had reasons to give up on the original device.

~~~
leapmotion_alex
The software has gone through two successive generations, each a massive step
up from the last.

~~~
munchbunny
I suppose I was hoping for a bit more detail than that - are there any key
areas where those improvements happened?

~~~
leapmotion_alex
Sure! With V2 we saw a more robust and granular hand model, with every finger
and joint in the hand being identified. Significantly better performance
against ambient light. And huge improvements to how the software handled
finger occlusion.

A lot of these improvements were diminished when we went to VR -- new angles,
complex backgrounds, different ambient lighting conditions. So we made the
Orion software, which was an even bigger step up:

\- lower latency

\- longer range

\- better and faster hand recognition

\- vastly improved robustness to cluttered backgrounds and ambient light

------
pbreit
I was so bullish on Leap Motion after seeing an early demo in 2011 but it
seems like they still haven't really figured out what to do with the tech
which is a shame. The demos are still neat but fatigue after 4 or 5. Then you
start to think about how horrific a general purpose input method it actually
is. I think I would have left the consumer market Kinect & Wii and focused on
commercial applications.

~~~
leapmotion_alex
Have you tried it in VR?

------
bruxis
This is legit cool, especially after seeing the new Oculus touch come out
(also cool, but requires so much external gear that I'd be hard pressed to
buy).

Only downside I see is in regards to not having something physical to
grip/grab for many games. Would this work with a fake gun controller in a
shooting game, for example? I doubt it could track my trigger finger when
obscured.

~~~
brokenmachine
If you're actually holding a gun anyway, you might as well use that as a
device, it'll definitely have better latency and accuracy.

------
serge2k
I completely confused this with magic leap and was surprised.

This sounds pretty neat.

