Elon Musk took the futuristic gesture interface from Iron Man and made it real

Robert Tiltons application is almost everything Musk seems to have done, except the lack of interfacing with CAD software (for example gesture based modification).

The other 2 links are, whilst only tangentially related, really cool, so I thought I'd post them as well.

So really, the question isn't "Why didn't it exist yet?" it's "Why was Elon's system featured on thenextweb, and Roberts wasn't?"

"At this point, when someone comes to us with something that users like but that we could envision forum trolls dismissing as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest."

And turned it into:

"Most things dismissed as toys are worth investing in."

Here's the thing, from where I'm sitting this is Light Pen Redux 2.0, as other commentators have pointed out, the system looks like a great way to induce the gorilla arm effect. Maybe there are aspects of this that SpaceX has a real use for, I'm not a rocket engineer. But I don't think it's out of line to call this what it appears to be, a PR piece.

He's got 7 billion dollars and a lot of resources that he can bring to bear. If he continues to take a deeper dive into its uses he could help spur further development. Either by creating the products with his team, or by purchasing third party solutions, thereby "investing" in other companies.

Now Elon needs to figure out how to incorporate an exoskeleton suit into one of his companies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_exoskeleton

http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/clips/paych...

Folks, "there's nothing new", until there is. At some point, new tech is a toy and dismissed because of its limitations. The whole idea is to identify those limitations and push through them.

SpaceX actually has some use for new ways to interact with virtual 3D objects. Everyone is focusing on modelling, but there's also the visualization. Which can be more important than the modelling itself. For comparison, think about how much time you spend writing code, vs reading and debugging code.

Technologies like these enables us to get new ways of looking at things. We are focusing on rotation and panning, but gesture-based interfaces can provide so much more.

Also, we are thinking about people sitting at desks, where other input devices might be more desirable. But what about gesture-based screens in other environments. Say, at the factories themselves? We are visual beings and we like to point at stuff (and talk about stuff). Maybe a combination of speech recognition and gestures would enable new interactions with machines?

Yeah, comparing to Iron Man is silly, but it is amusing. And easy for the average Joe to understand. That is PR, and NASA could learn from it.