When we reviewed the Leap Motion controller earlier this year, we found the application selection to be a bit lacking. Since then, the number of apps has doubled from 75 to around 150, and the Airspace store's newest edition is the coolest Leap app we've yet seen. It's called Free Form, and it's a 3D sculpting app (not unlike 3D Systems' Sculpt) built in house at Leap Motion that lets you manipulate and shape digital objects using your fingertips. David Holz, company co-founder and the man who figured out the math behind Leap Motion's technology, gave us a demo of the app and talked a bit about why Leap built it. Additionally, he showed us a new developer beta software that does 360-degree tracking built to address some of the original Leap shortcomings.
Filed under: Peripherals
Each week, our friends at gdgt go through the latest gadgets and score them to help you decide which ones to buy. Here are some of their most recent picks. Want more? Visit gdgt anytime to catch up on the latest, and subscribe to gdgt's newsletter to get a weekly roundup in your inbox.
Each week, our friends at gdgt go through the latest gadgets and score them to help you decide which ones to buy. Here are some of their most recent picks. Want more? Visit gdgt anytime to catch up on the latest, and subscribe to gdgt's newsletter to get a weekly roundup in your inbox.
You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Slowly but surely Leap Motion is making its way toward a commercial release. Today, the company has announced it's moving into the next phase of beta testing and that it will be opening up its developer portal to the public later in the week. While this still won't get folks a Leap device any faster, it will let them dig into Leap's tools and code base in preparation for when they finally get one. The move marks a shift from the company's previous SDK-focused beta to a consumer-focused one that'll serve to refine the UX in Windows and OSX. Within each operating system, there will be two levels of Leap control: basic, which essentially allows you to use Leap in place of a touchscreen, and advanced to allow for more 3D controls enabled by Leap's ability to detect the pitch and yaw of hands in space.
CEO Michael Buckwald gave us this good news himself, and also gave us a preview of Airspace, Leap's app store, and a few app demos for good measure. As it turns out, Airspace is a two-pronged affair -- Airspace Store is showcase for all software utilizing the Leap API and Airspace Home is a launcher that keeps all the Leap apps that you own in one convenient place. There will be 50 apps in Airspace at the start of the beta, with offerings from pro tools and utility apps to casual games, and we got to see a few examples.
Leap has been accepting pre-orders for its motion controller for some time now, and has been promising a ship date of May 13th since February, but there's now been a slight change of plans. The company has confirmed that it's delaying those shipments until July 22nd. In a letter sent to pre-order customers (included after the break), Leap CEO Michael Buckwald explains that the company has already manufactured over six hundred thousand devices and delivered twelve thousand to developers, and says "the reality is we very likely could have hit the original ship date." But, he adds, "it wouldn't have left time for comprehensive testing."
That's now set to begin in the form of a beta test that will start in June, which will see developers who've already received a unit get a feature complete product, and other non-developers invited to join as well. According to Buckwald, that expanded beta test is "the only way we felt 100% confident we could deliver a truly magical product that would do justice to this new form of interaction." He'll be participating in an open Google Hangout tomorrow to discuss the move further -- specific details on it are promised to be coming soon.
Filed under: Peripherals
