San Francisco is a city fueled by the Cloud, both literally and figuratively. Karl, you’re great – the bearded mystic that keeps a spring in our step and a song in our hearts – but distance makes the heart grow fonder! So we went down to Los Angeles this weekend for IndieCade to kick off our global 3D Jam. We hit the ground running on Friday with V2 demos for both desktop and virtual reality.
// Gaming
Developers, start your engines! Starting on October 19th, Leap Motion and IndieCade are kicking off a six-week global competition for developers to build innovative experiences for desktop, virtual reality, and beyond.
It’s no secret that for many developers in our community, midnight is the hour when the hacking gets good. Late last Friday night, over 1,000 undergraduates from across the country poured into California Memorial Stadium for Cal Hacks, a 36-hour coding spree put on by Major League Hacking. Sponsors ranging from tech’s biggest players to […]
Hi everyone,
I’d like to take a moment to talk about a series of developments we’ve been working on specifically for virtual reality. The first set involves our existing peripheral device and new things developers can do with it starting today, while the second is a look at some of our next-generation hardware and software efforts that we’re currently building from the ground up for this exciting and emerging space.
The Leap Motion Controller doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Across fiction, gaming, and art, we can see a rich history of motion control concepts and devices, and understanding what makes them successful is hugely important to building the next generation of real-world interfaces. In this two-part video, we look at some of the most compelling […]
Interacting with your computer is like reaching into another universe – one with an entirely different set of physical laws. Interface design is the art of creating digital rules that sync with our physical intuitions to bring both worlds closer together. We realize that most developers don’t want to spend days fine-tuning hand interactions, so we decided to design a framework that will accelerate development time and ensure more consistent interactions across apps.
Immersion is everything in a VR experience. Since your hands don’t actually float in space, we created a new Forearm API that tracks your physical arms. This makes it possible to create a more realistic experience with onscreen forearms.
Going from zero to 60 can feel exhilarating – but if you don’t know what you’re doing, it can spell disaster. The same is true for first-time app users. Even with traditional interfaces, a clear and intuitive onboarding experience is important. For new interfaces like the Leap Motion Controller, it can be the difference between joy and frustration. The trick is to build an onramp – a starting experience where users can “speed up” to access the full functionality and interaction set.
By learning how to play an instrument, musicians have the power to channel beauty and emotion through their hands. This makes music theory a ripe playground for 3D motion control experiments. If learning to play a physical instrument is a matter of learning how that object works and building muscle memory, why can’t learning chord progressions happen the same way – but in the air?
Art imitates life, but it doesn’t have to be bound by its rules. While natural interactions always begin with real world analogues, it’s our job as designers to craft new experiences geared towards virtual platforms. Building on last week’s game design tips, today we’re thinking about how we can break real-world rules and give people superpowers.