Leap Motion jumps into virtual reality

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The company has developed a mount for the Oculus Rift headset that could bring hand controls and gestures to virtual reality gaming.


The Oculus Rift Development Kit 2
The mount will let users attach the Leap Motion Controller directly to the VR headset.
©All rights reserved – Oculus VR -AFP/ Relaxnews

When the Leap Motion Controller launched in 2013 it was a great idea — a little device that allows users to control their computers with the wave of a hand or simply bending a single finger — but, as early adopters discovered, one with limited uses.

The controller uses infrared to identify the individual movements of individual fingers on both hands simultaneously and to translate those movements into commands — say pause a video playing on the screen, skip a track on the music player, or access the menu in a PC game.

But if there was no app to support the process the commands weren’t possible — Leap Motion isn’t compatible with Microsoft Office for or iTunes, for example — and so as cool as it sounds, it has remained a niche product.

However all of that could be about to change as the little device may have discovered its killer application: bringing gesture controls and another layer of interaction to virtual reality headsets.

The company has created a special mount for fixing the controller to the Oculus Rift headset. “If virtual reality is to be anything like actual reality, we believe that fast, accurate, and robust hand tracking will be absolutely essential. We believe in the concept of other specialized controllers as well, but our hands themselves are the fundamental and universal human input device,” said Leap Motion’s co-founder David Holz in a blog post announcing the new accessory on Thursday.

However, that’s just the start. As well as the mount, Leap Motion is going to open up the device’s technology to developers so that they can access its sensors directly. It would mean that “[w]hen mounted directly onto a head-worn display, these images become stereoscopic windows into the world around you. What it sees, you see,” explains Holz.

So, as well as being able to physically “handle” virtual objects seen via a VR headset, wearers would also be able to move around and see where they’re going.

Or, using the information from the sensor, developers could do everything from creating a virtual interior design program to turning even the walk into work into a fully interactive video game. -AFP/ Relaxnews