OT: Leap

Joe Hebert

Leap arrives at Best Buy in May for $79.99.
Looks pretty cool and it has an SDK.
Wave of the future or just a fad?

https://www.leapmotion.com/

DHawthorne

There is a reason computers have evolved to a semi-vertical screen and a mostly-horizontal input interface (keyboard/pointer). Holding your hands up in the air to interact with the screen would be a painful hell in not much more than an hour. Making the screen and the input device the same only works with tablets because they are relatively small - you can hold it in your hand at whatever angle you want, and use the other hand to touch/swipe/type. But anyone who types a lot on a tablet, winds up getting an external keyboard and setting them up in the conventional 100 degree or so angle from each other. People that draw on a computer get a tablet interface. Touch monitors never caught on for exactly that reason (well, add to that the fact that your finger is less accurate by orders of magnitude than a good pointer device).

So, bottom line is I think "fad," and I think some of these designers have to get their heads out of their butts and think about long term serious use if they want a product that's going to last. Once the novelty wears off, I can't see actually using such a thing the way it's presented ... not unless there is a paradigm shift in how it's used.

a_riot42

Its a cool device, but I think its use for human input is limited outside of gaming and similar applications. I don't want to control everything like I am conducting an orchestra. But I can see how it could be useful in other applications where you need 3D location information about something. The Minority Report interface sucks from a HCI viewpoint.

In their promo video they couldn't seem to find any good things to do with it, so they ended up demoing silly things like drawing circles on the screen and other finger painting kind of things. I guess it will come in handy if I ever need to do those kinds of things, but I can move a mouse pointer faster and more accurately than my fingers.
Paul