Leap Motion - Amazing new input device

[graboy]

http://leapmotion.com/

80$, being released this fall. Might actually be really useful for CAD purposes, but in addition to a keyboard and mouse.

[webwit]

I like it how it has become a standard in videos with this sort of thing, that the device is used to move around random plasma/swirling colors and lines and crap. One day we'll all be able to do that shit.

[Findecanor]

Jef Raskin's lawyers might stop by and talk about the name ...

[graboy]

Apple should integrate something like this into their laptops... that would be revolutionary.

[nathanscribe]

Great till your arms get tired. I'm not sure the best interface for a vertical screen is going to involve waving your arms around in a seated position.

Was that HL2 Lost Coast..?

[JBert]

Nifty and slick design, but I don't know if it has much use.

CAD users input commands from the keyboard or use a precise input device like an oversized version of a wacom tablet. Waving in mid-air only seems appropriate when you're working in 3D and want to spin around the view in your viewport. But since they have hold of the keyboard or mouse anyway, they might just do it that way rather than getting their arms tired.

Writing in the air? Good luck with that when even writing on a whiteboard takes practice, and there you got at least some support of the marker pushing against the board. You also have no resting surface.

The only practical use I see is in games, if they can overcome the chicken-or-egg situation, as a (cheaper?) alternative than a Kinect to operate public information kiosks, or just when you want one-handed browsing through your porn collection.

[danielucf]

Was that HL2 Lost Coast..?

Yes it was, but I'm always hesitant to new technologies that make aiming look easier than with a mouse, because really none of them actually have been.

[TheSoulhunter]

Does it need to be at a minimum distance to work correctly?

30 sec. in paint :P

Leap.png (13.04 KiB) Viewed 4919 times

[hoggy]

I think it's pretty nifty, but somehow I don't think it could help me write code...

But, thinking about it - could work nicely with scratch.



Shame I don't use scratch though.

[Charlie_Brown_MX]

I’m far from a CAD expert, but this looks like a dreadful input device for technical drawing. Waving your arms in the air — no matter how precise the tracking is — will never be as precise as mouse or Wacom-like tablet. There’s a reason draughting was historically done on an angled drawing board rather than a vertical one.

It might be good for moving between virtual desktops à la Mac OS X’s Spaces and other relatively imprecise window management gestures, but I can’t see this being a better option than a mouse or trackpad.

[sordna]

An early review is here:
http://9to5mac.com/2013/01/25/first-han ... c-and-pcs/

And here is some of the competition:
http://www.omekinteractive.com/products/grasp/