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Leap Motion sets a course for VR

community.leapmotion.com

21–30 of 34 posts

Re: Leap Motion sets a course for VR

#22

I've used the leap motion, and so far the accuracy is nowhere near what they show in the video. simply forming the index finger and thumb into an O-shape was enough for them to disappear from existence. If this is an active demo of their next generation software, I'm very impressed with the improvements, but I suspect its a mock-up.

Yeah, this was probably the early version of leap. The new SDK came out this May and it's actually improved quite a bit since then.

Re: Leap Motion sets a course for VR

#23

I've been a developing with leap for a while now and have been waiting for something like this to come out for me to justify buying an oculus. Anyone know if Oculus or Leap developers are making any decent profit these days?

Oculus has sold like 100K headsets at most. They raised 75M in funding then got bought for $2B. Definitely not profitable if you consider money invested to profit made.

Another metric might be burn rate to income. 100000 units x $350 = $35M, so maybe to this point they haven't spend that $35M. Something feels off about this. Oh right, cost of devices. So it's burn rate to profit. 100000 units x $50 = $5M. They may have spent less than $5M so far, but I'd be surprised.

Re: Leap Motion sets a course for VR

#25
post #13
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like their approach for simple apps where you are just working with your hands in front of you. But definitely optical tracking tech can't compete with exoskeleton like gloves and other sensor approaches. Curious if people think otherwise, optical tracking without many markers and many trackers just hasn't been done well in any product that I've come across, save motion capture studios.

I've never seen a truly useful application of hand gestures to control a PC. Great for short demos, though.

Agreed, the only thing that's been done sort of well is full body controls in MS Kinect. But it's only really the dancing games that I've found compelling. Most gamers would rather just play with a controller for most game genres they already enjoy.

Re: Leap Motion sets a course for VR

#26

They had a hacky demo of this at the Leap booth at Unite in Seattle last week. The Leap Motion was taped to the front of the Oculus, and you could (sort of) interact with a floating sphere. It's a neat idea, but the tech has a long way to go if that demo was anything to go by. I am excited for the advancement of input relating to VR though.

Given that the dk2 uses IR LEDs as markers to augment it's gyro/accelerometer for position tracking (by imaging them with a webcam pointed at the user). The leap dumping IR out of the front of the visor is going to be problematic, a combination of washing out the DK2 tracking camera and messing with the tracking algorithm by adding extra points.

Though maybe the frequency of the IR LEDs is different enough...

Re: Leap Motion sets a course for VR

#27
post #19
post #14

This is a killer peripheral for Oculus.

Sadly no one's figured out how to adapt the DK1 mount to fit neatly on a DK2. I have a very nice holder printed off of Thingiverse, but it's a little tricky figuring out how exactly to get it onto the Oculus. I really hope Oculus actually add some mounting threads or something to the front of the visor for this type of thing in the CV1.

Because of the IR marker LEDs I'd be hesitant to strap a leap on there considering it's dumping IR light out of it to illuminate your hands.

Re: Leap Motion sets a course for VR

#28

They had a hacky demo of this at the Leap booth at Unite in Seattle last week. The Leap Motion was taped to the front of the Oculus, and you could (sort of) interact with a floating sphere. It's a neat idea, but the tech has a long way to go if that demo was anything to go by. I am excited for the advancement of input relating to VR though.

Given that the dk2 uses IR LEDs as markers to augment it's gyro/accelerometer for position tracking (by imaging them with a webcam pointed at the user). The leap dumping IR out of the front of the visor is going to be problematic, a combination of washing out the DK2 tracking camera and messing with the tracking algorithm by adding extra points. Though maybe the frequency of the IR LEDs is different enough...

For IR LEDs you have not only the wavelength of light, you also have a repitition rate. Typically you modulate the IR LED with a square-wave in the 10s of kHz; this lets you have a much higher instantaneous power with a much lower average power. If done right, it also means that 2 IRs with a sufficiently different clock-rate will interfere with each other less.

Re: Leap Motion sets a course for VR

#29
For a hacknight back in April, I tried mapping my arm into a 3D pointing device that recognized a recoil wrist gesture as firing a gun. Sound effects like "pew pew pew" were optional but heavily encouraged.

I initially tried the Leap Motion mounted on the Oculus Rift. As this blog notes, the top-down recognition was iffy at best but things really went to shit the moment the sensor was moved. I was unable to get even gun orientation working in the 6 hours or so that I tried, so maybe the new SDK + sensors can fix that.

I did end up building my demo, but with a alpha Thalmic Myo instead of the Leap. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lihaqf3COw8

Re: Leap Motion sets a course for VR

#30

I've been a developing with leap for a while now and have been waiting for something like this to come out for me to justify buying an oculus. Anyone know if Oculus or Leap developers are making any decent profit these days?

Oculus has sold like 100K headsets at most. They raised 75M in funding then got bought for $2B. Definitely not profitable if you consider money invested to profit made. Another metric might be burn rate to income. 100000 units x $350 = $35M, so maybe to this point they haven't spend that $35M. Something feels off about this. Oh right, cost of devices. So it's burn rate to profit. 100000 units x $50 = $5M. They may ha…

I think "Oculus or Leap developers" was referring to developers making software that uses Oculus or Leap, not the companies producing the hardware. I also assume that the answer must be no (for now) since the install base is still quite small.
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