Leap Motion brings 3D motion control to the desktop, with mixed results

http://media.edge-online.com/wp-cont...on-610x343.jpgAt first, Leap Motion’s device feels like magic. An invisible cone of light tracks your fingers in front of your monitor and turns every gesture into onscreen action across Leap’s selection of independent games and apps – and, like every motion controller, it feels unique and exciting right up to the moment you break the spell with your own curiosity.It’s players’ own faults, really. You watch your family enjoying Wii Sports with exaggerated serving motions, dipping a knee to bowl and swinging for the bleachers, and you ask yourself: “Just how little do I need to swing the controller to get the same effect?” The answer is, of course, not much – the Wii Remote’s sensitivity was never a match for the games it was sold upon, and a simple flick of the wrist was ample to launch a Wii Sports baseball out of the stadium. Kinect, too, was magic right up until the moment you found that placing one arm behind your back sent your character flailing, or that turning sideways gave you a double-jointed knee.Leap Motion’s $80 controller, with which the company shares its name, is a tiny device that fills the space in front of your monitor with infrared light and tracks every motion within its area of effect. It looks innocuous on a desk and is easily set up, with the drivers and Airspace application downloaded from Leap’s site. It ships in a neat little square box, has two USB cables – one long, one short, to accommodate different setups – and salutes Apple’s design aesthetic with its brushed aluminium and glossy black shell.A tutorial and selection of demos are Leap Motion’s first magic trick. As you swipe your fingers through the air you’ll trace glowing lines on the screen, drawing shapes and pictures with a finger. Another demo tracks the orientation of your hands with an onscreen skeleton, each wireframe finger mirroring your own instantly as you move it. But when curiosity gets the better of you and you turn your hand sideways, you lose three of your skeletal fingers. Leap Motion’s two-dimensional view of the world limits the readability of your gestures and means a sideways hand is as good as a one-fingered hand. Test the depth of the cone and you’ll find that you’re often dipping your hands in and out of the light without realising; there’s a learning process with Leap Motion’s device, and the software does little to assist your understanding of the gestural language you’re forced to learn.