The Future is (Almost) Here

A few weeks ago a visiting friend expressed his enthusiasm for the upcoming release of the Leap Motion controller. However, I'm not always in the tech loop so I just proceeded to give him a blank stare.

Leap Motion controller?

OMG THIS EXISTS?

Apparently, I had somehow missed the news that we'd progressed to the Minority Report age in terms of computer interaction. Needless to say, I quickly jumped on the bandwagon and about 15 minutes after watching the introduction video I had put in my $80 pre-order for a ticket to the future. I lay in bed that night with visions of Tony Stark dancing in my head.

I am Iron Man and you can too.

About 2 weeks of painful waiting went by and finally IT arrived. It took all my self restraint not to rip the box out of the hands of the apartment frontdesk person while they made me sign for my delivery.

omgomgomgomgomgomg

A word of warning. Don't try this out for the first time in public. Obvious? Perhaps.

What I expected:

Organizing my Facebook pictures has never been easier.

What I got:

NNNGGGGHHHHH

Brief (but somewhat related) tangent:

So I don't know how many of you have played the game Surgeon Simulator 2013. Basically your hand movements are mapped to your keyboard and mouse clicks which means picking up a pencil takes all the finesse and skill of docking a spacecraft.

SS2013 is best classified as a "rage" game due to the sheer stupidity of your fat hands as you try to delicately cut through organ tissue during a heart transplant. Also, your patient is slowly bleeding to death because you were such a butterfingers and dropped the drill right into his chest cavity.

Half the time I'm using the Leap Motion I feel like that- frustrated by the simplest of tasks. My fingers become clumsy sausages pawing at the air. And rather than clicking on a link I end up scrolling down the page and highlighting all the text and copying it to my clipboard. Because yeah. It's intuitive like that.

Also, you can only interface with special Leap Motion apps which are available for purchase in their Airspace app store (mind you, some are free). There's around 70 something apps currently available, including games like Fruit Ninja. Having just spent $80 on the controller, I wasn't particularly inclined to spend extra $$ on apps so most of the stuff I've been playing with either came with the controller on install or was free for download in the app store.

I figured that you wouldn't simply be able to plug and go with the Leap Motion but I wasn't quite prepared for an app store. At this point, I'm more intrigued by the SDKs available for download on the Leap Motion website.

Before you go and laugh and say "haha, I told you the future was a lie," let me clarify by telling you that I'm not actually disappointed by the Leap Controller.

Sure, the technology is new and there's definitely room for improvement but in those moments when the controller and your hands are in sync, it's a beautiful thing. I think this was a great "leap" (haha, sorry) forward in terms of new ways to interface with computers. So yes, it's going to be buggy and maybe a bit clumsy and awkward. But that's how most tech is in its early days. Just look at touch screens.

Here's an article by ars technica that explains it all quite well:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/07/hands-on-with-the-leap-motion-controller-cool-but-frustrating-as-hell/

Someday.