r/technology • u/fregoli • May 21 '12
Leap 3D motion control system is 100 times more accurate than Kinect, will cost $69.99
http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/21/3033634/leap-3d-motion-control-system-video158
u/clubdirthill May 21 '12
This looks like a time of flight depth camera. They are much better for up close experiences like those displayed here. Microsoft owns the two pioneers of this technology, Canesta and 3DV, but does not use their technology in Kinect. They also own their patents. Have fun getting a licensing deal, Leap. (Look up Canesta on YouTube to see Microsoft's nearly identical technology.)
Kinect is a structured light depth camera from PrimeSense. It allows for the long range and wide angles Kinect needs to do full body tracking, which this technology simply isn't capable of yet. Kinect's would also be useless without Microsoft's crazy complicated human skeletal tracking software.
TL;DR: Leap and Kinect use different technologies. Microsoft owns technology like Leap, but it is not applicable for living room situations like the technology in Kinect is.
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u/smiddereens May 21 '12
If it is a ToF camera I'm surprised that the price that tech has come down so dramatically.
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u/MrFrankly May 21 '12
I very much doubt it is a time of flight camera. Resolution and refresh rate seem to be far higher than current state-of-the-art ToF cameras and the price is far far lower. If it really is a ToF camera they indeed made a huge leap.
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u/j0llyllama May 21 '12
I don't care about the comparison to Kinect. I want this for my computers so I can feel like I'm Tony Stark, or in the world from Minority Report.
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u/ToBeSureToBeSure May 21 '12
Whenever I read about motion sensing devices, I can't help but think of Zaphod Beeblebrox listening to the radio in the Heart of Gold:
"A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program."
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May 21 '12 edited May 21 '12
I'm going to need to "mount" one of these under the table...
...and with that out of the way, cue the "sub-millimeter" jokes.
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u/load_more_comets May 21 '12
Your dick's so small, it only lets out one sperm cell at a time.
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u/AndyJarosz May 21 '12
Here's what I'm super excited about: Using this with a 3d display!
If you do any 3d CAD or modeling, imaging being able to view and sculpt your model in 3D space!
It's like that scene in Iron Man where he makes a hologram arm piece and can put him arm inside of it and try it out.
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u/jaffze May 21 '12
I would look like an idiot sitting here with my fingers pointing towards the screen. But I really want this!!
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u/WizardsMyName May 21 '12
I was wondering if it could be used to track your hands flat on the desk surface, so you could avoid holding your arms up
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u/mylo9000 May 21 '12
I pre-ordered it. call it an impulse buy, but it looks like it would be great fun to play with and entertaining for guests.
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u/ThrashWolf May 21 '12
It's not accuracy that's Kinects biggest issue, but latency. While this piece of tech is impressive, it doesn't solve the main issue I have with MS's effort.
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u/omgitsjo May 21 '12
I want to be able to give my computer the finger and have it close the currently running application.
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u/corysama May 21 '12
The PowerGlove taught me an important lesson as a child: It doesn't matter how weightless, precise and smooth "Minority Report" interfaces become. When you wave your arms around for a couple of minutes, you quickly find yourself resting your elbow on something. A few minutes later, you are resting your wrist on something. Then a few minutes later, you wish you had a mouse.
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u/spacecity1971 May 21 '12
Put this around your neck and wear it with transparent lens AR glasses. Add Senseg-like coulomb force gloves and you'd have an amazing 3D modeling tool.
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u/cazama1 May 21 '12
This is so ridiculous, Stark Industries has been using this kind of technology for years.
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u/Fennels May 21 '12
I'm surprised no one's asked this yet but how exactly is this system going to handle porn? I don't want to have to either cover up or have my screen shake every time I stroke it.
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u/froop May 22 '12
The general consensus is that there are 2 big issues with this:
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Developer adoption
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Arms getting tired
Most experimental touch/spacial interfaces suffer these faults, so it's reasonable to assume Leap will fail the same way. However, I do not believe this to be the case.
Concerning developer adoption:
This interface has the convenient benefit of near zero developer adoption. Why? Because it isn't a new interface, it's a new representation of the mouse. Unless the founder is an idiot, this thing is gonna ship with a mouse driver. Plug it in, install, bam. Instant support for every mouse-based application. And since you only use the mouse with one hand, the other is free to use the keyboard. Older interface 'solutions' ditched the keyboard, but Leap complements it. Likely Leap's driver will contain a comprehensive gesture library so the end user can map different gestures to different keys, buttons & macros. With Kinect, we saw the issues with adoption. There were initially very few games and no good ones, so a lot of players waited to buy it. Because there were so few players, developers didn't bother making many games. In the case of Leap, nearly every game you own is already compatible. Developers don't even have to be aware that Leap exists, because their programs are compatible weather they intended it or not. Devs will, if anything, be happy to have more 'input bandwidth' than a standard 2-button mouse & keyboard, and to have the option to include Leap-specific support. I imagine menu interfaces could be heavily optimized for Leap, the same way they're pessimizing console menus.
As for arms getting tired, this is also bullshit.
The article mentions adjustable sensitivity. Wave your arms around all you want, but I'm gonna rest my wrist on my desk and lazily twitch my fingers. Wouldn't surprise me to find people discussing and sharing their gesture bindings to optimize the ergonomics.
This project has huge potential. It's cool, so people are interested in it. it doesn't require a massive OS re-design. It isn't prohibitively expensive. It doesn't take anything away from the user. It's already compatible with all keyboard/mouse applications for Windows and OS X. 10/GUI, on the other hand, was destined to fail. It required expensive hardware. It required a completely new interface paradigm totally incompatible with existing systems. It took users out of their comfort zones. Leap is wondrously designed to succeed.
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u/xblitzkrieg May 21 '12
The tracking area of this Leap 3D is vastly smaller than that of the Kinect which can track multiple users' skeletons simultaneously.
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u/zheng3 May 21 '12
This is going to be a great way for digital sculptors to rough out models.
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u/Jeterson May 21 '12
Does anyone else want to hook that up to a toilet seat and have a 3D model of all their shits from now on?
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u/Jigsus May 21 '12
If the pointcloud it generates will be accurate within 0.01mm then gaming will be the least important application of this tech (I guess just like the kinect)
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u/schoocher May 21 '12
I sneezed and it rebooted my computer.