Why the Leap Is the Best Gesture-Control System We've Ever Tested

The finger-tracking Leap. Photo: Leap Motion

On Monday, Leap Motion wowed technology enthusiasts with a video of its new gesture-control platform. The video showcased a system of incredible speed and precision, but controlled demos can sometimes oversell a technology's real-world capabilities.

Would the Leap 3-D gesture device disappoint us during a real-world hands-on? No — far from it. We were somewhat surprised to discover the Leap is everything portrayed in the Leap Motion video. You can see everything we observed in our own video below.

Like the Kinect, the peripheral tracks human body gestures, and translates this movement into corresponding motions on a video display. According to Leap Motion, its input device is 200 times more precise than Kinect or anything else on the market. It's a bold claim that's difficult to test. So we sat down with Leap Motion co-founders Michael Buckwald and David Holz to wiggle our fingers at the new device.

The first thing we noticed is the system's lack of latency. If you've ever drawn on a touchscreen tablet, you've noticed the lag between quick finger strokes and the tablet's slower registration of those strokes. But the Leap's lag is imperceptible. Finger movements, swipes and taps in mid-air instantly registered as onscreen movements. For example, a spirited Fruit Ninja session delivered nearly real-time fruit cocktail-building action.

According to Buckwald, the system's latency is so low, it's effectively imperceptible. As for any latency the system does suffer (however imperceptible it may be), Buckwald says half results from the refresh rate of the connected display, and a quarter comes from the hardware's USB 2.0 interface. The final quarter of system latency comes from the Leap itself.

During our hands-on testing, Leap Motion showed us a demo in which the system was able to track all the individual fingers of our hands. The system could even perceive the angles of our fingers in relation to the display as we pushed our hands into 3-D space. Grabbing, poking, swiping — all of it was tracked by the Leap.

The system can register and follow as many items as can be placed within the 3-D space it tracks. We placed three hands (and their 15 fingers) into the tracked area, and all body parts were recognized by the system. An air-hockey demo showcased a two-person gaming environment, but developers could no doubt come up with something even more impressive that pushes the limits of gaming.

Users of the Kinect and similar systems are accustomed to using sweeping arm movements to control gameplay. For example, on the Xbox 360, jumping from one interface tile to the next involves moving your entire arm in a fluid motion. It's a big, sweeping gesture. But the Leap condenses this interaction into an 8-foot cubic space.

Now, 8 cubic feet may sound like a huge area, but it's not. The result is a system that allows user control with much finer, less demanding gestures. Instead of sweeping your arm to get something done, you can sweep your finger. And movements like the simple flick of a knuckle can be used to navigate and interact.

The system is so precise, in fact, we were able to draw tiny circles within a 1-centimeter area. And at this level of precision, the system could even register our post-energy-drink jitters as we motioned in front of the screen. It wasn't enough to detract from the experience, but we had to second-guess our beverage choices.

We also found that gesturing with only one's fingers cuts down on all the fatigue that's suffered in a system that requires large movements. That said, without something concrete to place one's hands and fingers on, there's the potential for fatigue after using the system for an entire day. To this end, the system seems more like an additional input device than a hardware controller replacement.

The Leap keeps you reaching. Photo: Leap Motion

The Leap looks to be a clever, novel input device for gaming, design and 3-D modeling. But even at its slated $70 price point, we can't see it replacing the mouse and trackpad. It will be a secondary input device for most people, and a primary input device for just a few hardcore users.

But this shouldn't diminish the incredible technology powering the Leap, or the potential uses of the device once developers start building apps based on the device's SDK, or use Leap Motion's APIs to add Leap functionality to applications already on the market.

In person, the pre-production version of the Leap is as impressive as the demo video. Once we have the production model in our hands, we'll be able to determine if Leap Motion transfers all the magic of its demo unit into the final shipping product.

The Leap is available for pre-order right now and will ship sometime during the December-through-February time frame. Leap Motion will make an SDK and APIs available to developers, and plans on shipping the first batches of the hardware to developers as well. An application to sign up to be one of the first coders to work with the the Leap is on the company's site.

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Original Page: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/05/why-the-leap-is-the-best-gesture-control-system-weve-ever-tested/

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Regards,

Derik Chan