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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 n

by dignati 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      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.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - doorhammer 12y ago
      Portal, paper mario, braid, flight sims, sim city, tropico, civilization(? you do kill people in that), kerbal space program, etc. I'm not by any means going to deny the flood of games that are based on violence. Most of the mentioned games were off the top of my head, but when I went looking for more, I was definitely a little surprised by just how tough it was to find well known contenders. I can see how a casual brush with games might not bring a lot of the good ones to the front, though. I like games that really change how I think about a problem (portal, braid, paper mario), let me experience things I can't pragmatically experience right now (flight sims), or complex strategic games with some satire (civ/tropico). I'm interested in games because I think they can be a really valid art form and a powerful way to convey concepts and ideas. I'm incredibly excited for how far the oculus rift and new motion tracking techs will let me take that. I remember the first time I played Assassins Creed. I mean, the game is about murder. It's in the title. My brother got frustrated at me after an hour of watching and yelled "STOP CLIMBING SHIT AND EXPLORING. KILL SOMEONE." I think he left after I spent another fifteen minutes exploring the ancient middle east.
rasz_pl 12y ago
>small, old piece of hardware with a software update and show what it's really capable o It was always about the software. Hardware is just 2 parallax USB 3.0 cameras in one small box. There is ZERO hardware processing.

by dignati 12y ago

batmansbelt 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - doorhammer 12y ago
    Portal, paper mario, braid, flight sims, sim city, tropico, civilization(? you do kill people in that), kerbal space program, etc. I'm not by any means going to deny the flood of games that are based on violence. Most of the mentioned games were off the top of my head, but when I went looking for more, I was definitely a little surprised by just how tough it was to find well known contenders. I can see how a casual brush with games might not bring a lot of the good ones to the front, though. I like games that really change how I think about a problem (portal, braid, paper mario), let me experience things I can't pragmatically experience right now (flight sims), or complex strategic games with some satire (civ/tropico). I'm interested in games because I think they can be a really valid art form and a powerful way to convey concepts and ideas. I'm incredibly excited for how far the oculus rift and new motion tracking techs will let me take that. I remember the first time I played Assassins Creed. I mean, the game is about murder. It's in the title. My brother got frustrated at me after an hour of watching and yelled "STOP CLIMBING SHIT AND EXPLORING. KILL SOMEONE." I think he left after I spent another fifteen minutes exploring the ancient middle east.

rasz_pl 12y ago

>small, old piece of hardware with a software update and show what it's really capable o It was always about the software. Hardware is just 2 parallax USB 3.0 cameras in one small box. There is ZERO hardware processing.