At its most powerful, education harnesses our natural curiosity as human beings to understand the universe and everything in it. This week on the blog, we’re exploring what it means to actually reach into knowledge – and why developers are at the forefront of how the next generation is learning about the world they live in.

Seeing a geological diagram in a textbook is one thing. But reaching out and creating massive volcanoes with your bare hands? Rearranging the continents by searching for hidden fossil patterns? Now you’ve got some magic in the classroom.

Educational gaming is on the verge of a major turning point, and one of the leading forces is Gamedesk – an LA-based research institute, commercial development studio, online community platform, and physical school.

Recently, Gamedesk released a lengthy white paper detailing how they built a set of “kinesthetic learning” games that teachers can use to teach complicated geoscience concepts to students aged 12 to 15. These include Leap Motion games GeoMoto and Pangean, which let you rearrange continents, shift tectonic plates, and form volcanoes. Pangean and Geomoto are both available for free download on Gamedesk’s website and on our Developer Gallery.

Pangean

Formerly known as Continental Drift, this puzzle game introduces the essentials of continental drift before moving on to plate tectonics. As a galactic member of the United Colonies, you travel the universe in your own scouting ship – using your hologram interface to piece together continents and demonstrate the shift that occurs over a hundred million years.

Use the fossil probe to reveal patterns in creature inhabitance and the sonar to scan for eroded portions of the continent. Your final mission? Returning present-day Earth to its Pangaea state! To help students absorb the lesson, teachers can ask: Why do you think the continents can be connected with each other? How did you use fossil remains to help you connect continents up? And why do you think similar fossils are found in different continents now?

GeoMoto

Building on their insights from the other three games in the series, GeoMoto (formerly Plate Tectonics) gives players a more direct relationship to geo-concepts. In other words, pulling, smashing, and grinding tectonic plates together!

Using the Leap Motion Controller, players navigate around a world with no geographic features, then shift and experience the motion of the plates with hand movements. You can see how plate tectonics create volcanoes, folded mountains, rift valleys, and seafloor spreading, then learn about different types of faults and the Richter scale.

Kinesthetic Learning and the Future of Education

Geoscience is a complicated subject that involves thinking about the Earth as a fluid and complex system that’s constantly changing. These can be difficult concepts for kids, so Gamedesk used a kinesthetic learning approach to shed new light on the subject. This is a learning style that lets students engage physically with complex subjects through movement and action, rather than just watching a video.

Along with the creative and educational possibilities of virtual reality, we’re excited to see where motion-controlled gaming will take the next generation of students. You can download Pangean and Geomoto from Gamedesk’s website. Be sure to check out their white paper to learn about how the games were researched, built, and tested – including lesson plans and resources for teachers!

The post Tectonic Shift: Why Education is About to Change Forever appeared first on Leap Motion Blog.

At its most powerful, education harnesses our natural curiosity as human beings to understand the universe and everything in it. This week on the blog, we’re exploring what it means to actually reach into knowledge – and why developers are at the forefront of how the next generation is learning about the world they live in.

Yesterday, we saw how Gamedesk brought a suite of cutting-edge kinesthetic learning games to life, including two Leap Motion games that introduce students to plate tectonics and continental drift. Here are some essential insights that we gleaned from their recent white paper that every educational game developer should know.

Hard Problems Need Creative Solutions

What are the toughest things for students to understand? Gamedesk decided to focus on geology because geological events take place on a massive scale and over long periods of time. Find a subject where the core concepts can be difficult to grasp – that’s where you’ll make the biggest difference.

Narrative Structure

Storytelling is one of humanity’s oldest pastimes, and stories play a major role in how we understand the world. Your game experience should make it easy to weave facts together into a story.

Explicit Goals and Rules

Every game needs a framework of goals and rules so that players know what’s possible, and have an intuitive sense of how to continue. Make sure they can get into the flow with the right goals, obstacles, and expectations.

Consistent Indications of Progress

Points, badges, victorious sound effects – make sure your users feel that they’re breaking new ground in your game with an achievement system.

Intuitive Ramping Structures

The best games make learning how to play the game part of the game itself. Start with the most basic motion interactions (like grabbing a puzzle piece) and work your way up to more complex combinations (like grabbing, twisting, and releasing to move the piece into place).

Elegant Scaffolding Systems

Don’t throw your players in the conceptual deep end. Start with fundamental concepts and build on learned content. Players should feel like their newly acquired knowledge is helping them progress through more difficult stages. Gamedesk’s GeoMoto starts with basic knowledge about tectonic plates before moving into different types of faults.

Include Followup Questions

How can you tell if your game increased your players’ knowledge of the world? Whether you’re including a lesson plan or just want to quiz players at different stages, questions can lead to a sense of achievement while locking in the lessons.

Test, Iterate, Test

At every stage of development, it’s important to rapidly test and iterate on every component of your game. Start with small, personal, one-on-one tests and then build your way up to see how your game will perform in the wild.

Want to see these ideas in action – complete with lesson plans and resources for educators? Download Pangean and Geomoto free from Gamedesk’s website and read their white paper.

The post 8 Things Every Educational Game Developer Needs to Know appeared first on Leap Motion Blog.

At its most powerful, education harnesses our natural curiosity as human beings to understand the universe and everything in it. This week on the blog, we’re exploring what it means to actually reach into knowledge – and why developers are at the forefront of how the next generation is learning about the world they live in.

Further Reading and Links:

• Tectonic Shift: Why Education is About to Change Forever
• 8 Things Every Educational Game Developer Needs to Know
• Pangean and Geomoto (downloads)
• Gamedesk’s white paper (including full development process)

The post How to Build a World-Class Education App appeared first on Leap Motion Blog.

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There are no limits to what you can hack together with the Leap Motion Controller – which is why this year’s Leap Motion 3D Jam includes an Open Track for desktop and Internet of Things projects! In this post, hardware hacker Syed Anwaarullah walks through his 3D-printed robotic hand project, which appeared at India’s first-ever Maker Faire. The Arduino Leonardo and ESP8266 WiFi module that he used are both on the 3D Jam approved hardware list, and the project is completely open source!

After having played around with wirelessly controlling Arduino with Leap Motion through Bluetooth two years back, I didn’t get an opportunity to tinker more with Leap Motion and Arduino. But when the call for project submissions for India’s first Mini Maker Faire opened, I decided to re-do this project, albeit using the popular ESP8266 WiFi module instead of a Bluetooth one.

To get started, I updated the Leap Motion SDK and noticed a bunch of improvements, including new features in the Visualizer. I cloned my earlier code and started testing out the Java example.

After getting this done, we turn to programming the Arduino to configure the ESP8266 to receive data and then have some fun. In my first approach, I tried to use the ESP8266 in Client Mode, wherein it connected to the WiFi Router and received data from my PC. This seemed cumbersome as I had to carry the WiFi Router to demo the project. I decided to configure the ESP8266 in Access Point Mode (AP/Hotspot) and get the PC directly talking to the ESP as a Client.

After writing a simple Client Socket code in Java, and testing out if the data was being received at the ESP, it was now time to glue them all together.

And this is how it started off:

I had a printed Raptor Hand and I felt the demo would be made much better by getting a human arm to control a prosthetic arm.

Here, you can see I’m using a simple SG-90 Servo Motor to control the Arm movement.

After gluing, filing, and threading around, the project was almost in shape and ready to be demoed at the Maker Faire.

And after dozens of man-hours, we finally got it all working:

The LeapMotion counts the number of fingers and sends it over the to an Arduino Leonardo derivative board which has an ESP8266 (ESP03) hard-wired beneath. The following actions take place:

Finger(s) Count: 1 → Turn ON Yellow Light
Finger(s) Count: 2 → Turn OFF Yellow Light
Finger(s) Count: 3 → Turn ON Red Light
Finger(s) Count: 4 → Turn OFF Yellow Light
Finger(s) Count: 0 → Close Arm
Finger(s) Count: 5 → Open Arm

It was now time to show this “off” at the Maker Faire:

Most of the folks enjoyed opening/closing the prosthetic arm. Kids enjoyed it a lot (and I had a good time interacting with them) and other Makers.

And now, let’s dig into the working and the code behind all this fun.

The entire code (Java and Arduino) can be cloned from this repo on BitBucket. The project is also listed on Leap Motion’s Developer Gallery.

Quick Code Notes

• The method establishWiFiConnection() in Arduino configures the ESP8266 in Client Mode and createWiFiHotspotServer() configures ESP in AP mode.
• I’m using an Arduino Leonardo which has the Hard Serial Port wired to Serial1 class. If you’re using a Uno, you can use Software Serial Digital Pins 11 and 12 connected to a 4 Channel Relay Module (which is active low triggered)
• The IP Address in Java Class 192.168.4.1 is the IP Address of the ESP when running in AP mode. When running the ESP in Client Mode, replace this with the dynamic IP assigned to the ESP

If you need any help in implementing this (or other related stuff), you can email me at syed {Shift+2} anwaarullah d0t com.

An earlier version of this post appeared on Syed’s blog.

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Happy Halloween! At Leap Motion, we’ve seen our fair share of impressive motion-controlled robots that will one day bring about the robocalypse. (We’re looking at you, hexapod!) But the robot revolution is just getting started.

This month, two different robot arms featuring Leap Motion control have vastly overshot their Kickstarter funding targets, promising to bring miniaturized adaptive robotics to your desktop in new and exciting ways. On another level, a high school student’s robotics project is combining the Oculus Rift and motion control to create an experience that takes you wherever the robot goes.

Babbage: The VR Telepresence Rover

Last month, Alex Kerner kicked off the first of a series of videos exploring how he built Babbage, a versatile telepresence robot, from soldering to software. We caught up with Alex earlier this week to ask about his vision for the project.

“What really got me into robotics is that it’s an emerging technology,” he said, “so there’s a lot of room to be innovative without having to make something incredibly sophisticated. I love the idea of building something from scratch on my own, which is why Iron Man is my favorite superhero. Robots in particular are fascinating to me, because of the mechanical sophistication and innovation required to make them function.”

As for the augmented reality side of the equation, Alex sees it as a way to make robotic controls more seamless and intuitive. “Instead of having to learn the controls, or program an AI to interpret commands, it’s as easy as reaching through the screen and doing it myself. It opens up a lot of opportunities for complex systems that would be frustrating to control conventionally, such as the movement of the head.”

Named after computer science pioneer Charles Babbage, Alex’s robot is controlled through a spiderweb of different languages, which he plans to integrate in the months ahead:

• The motors are controlled with Node.js using the Johnny-five library.
• The sensors are read by the Arduinos, which in turn run the Firmata sketch to relay commands from the Beaglebones.
• A third Arduino board runs custom C++ and communicates via I2C, as Johnny-five has no library to support multiple sonars.
• Python is used to capture the web video from the cameras and directly overlay the graphics.
• The Oculus Rift’s accelerometer is read with a custom C++ app (with plans to rewrite this into the Python app instead).
• The Nokia runs C# code for voice recognition (which is still a work in progress).
• Unlike most VR projects, Babbage doesn’t involve a 3D engine.

What’s it like being inside Babbage as he explores the world? “As of right now, the video feed is a little jerky, but it feels immersive,” said Alex “The idea of a telepresence robot is to make the operator more like a driver than a commander, and that’s exactly what it feels like.” At this stage, he says, bringing the latency down will be an important step in reducing sim sickness.

Where VR and robotics collide, Alex believes that telepresence will be a major step forward in how humans interact with the world. “It’s a technology that could potentially make mundane transportation obsolete. Anything that a human can do with a vehicle, a remote operated drone, or even on foot could be done using a telepresence robot. Rovers like Babbage will probably see a lot of use in places where it’s too dangerous to go on foot, like rescue or military operations, or even as an opportunity to live an active life for someone who is disabled or homebound.”

Future videos will demonstrate the laser system, sonar, visual system and face recognition, and the Leap Motion input – including a future “snapshot” gesture. We can’t wait to see how Babbage’s journey progresses.

Dobot: A Robotic Arm for Everyone

Dobot is intended to take the industrial robotic arm beyond the maker community and into everyday life. With a 4-axis parallel-mechanism arm connected to an Arduino, the Dobot has seven distinct control methods, including wireless, voice, and Leap Motion controls.

According to one of the creators behind the project, “as industrial robot engineers, we wanted to find a highly functional and agile, desktop robot arm, but were unsatisfied by low cost, low precision and poor functionality desktop robotic arms on the market. The consumer-level robot arms at the time were mostly servo-based. When users bought the robots, they found that the precision wasn’t high enough to replicate the applications shown in Kickstarter demos, like writing, grabbing things, not along helping them with more complicated tasks.”

From there, the group quit their jobs to develop a high precision robot based on stepper motors. The Leap Motion Controller was a natural input choice for its popularity among makers and developers. “With Leap Motion, we can achieve a nature way to manipulate the robot arm, and an easy approach to understanding how it works. In this case, Dobot is not only a professional tool to work with, but a great desktop platform for everyone to enjoy.”

7Bot: An Arm that Can See, Think, and Learn

Another Kickstarter campaign that recently blew past its funding goal, 7Bot is a 6-axis robot arm designed to be a miniature version of the popular IRB 2400 industrial robot. You can teach it how to move by holding its arm and guiding its movements, control it over the web, or through your hand movements:

For us, one of the most exciting things about this video was the extremely low latency on display. We caught up with the 7Bot team to ask about their process. According to Eric, one of the developers on the team, “Leap Motion is an essential control method for 7Bot. It allows everyone, including one of our grandfathers, to control 7Bot at ease.”

“Leap Motion can detect the hand gestures very accurately. But sometimes there are jitters, which are highly undesirable in controlling the robot. We applied a median filter to eliminate jitters, and some simple mapping relations were also used to make this application more intuitive to users. The high capture rate of the Leap Motion Controller and high processing rate of the median filter achieve such a low latency, which is only 0.1 to 0.2 seconds in theory.”

What’s next for 7Bot’s Leap Motion integration? The team plans to add more end-effectors to 7Bot, including one with 5 fingers, like those used in prosthetics. This means that a future version could effectively mirror your real life hand and finger movements.

The world is yours to hack – what will you build? The 2015 3D Jam is running right now with over 25 types of approved hardware, including Arduino, the Parrot AR drone, Lego Mindstorms, Mini Pan-Tilt Kit, OWI Robotic Arm Edge, and more! Bring your hardware dreams to life and register now.

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Take an infrared selfie and post it @LeapMotion #3DJam. Create your dream house in VR. Weave light and sound with your bare hands. Or just paint some happy little trees! In today’s 3D Jam spotlight, we’re featuring 17 brand-new art and music experiences and utilities that will ignite your creative spark. They’re all free for download at itch.io/jam/leapmotion3djam.

(Don’t forget to rate each demo and boost your favorites in the rankings! For VR demos, make sure you check the runtime requirements on their game pages.)

ArchyTech

Creating the spaces where we live isn’t just for architects – now anyone can do it! Created by Latvian developers @GoVR_studio, ArchyTech is designed to “guide you through the fun process of building your dream house. All the tools you’ll need are at your fingertips, and Archy is there with his professional architectural suggestions.”

The game is designed as a small preview of what the future of architecture might be – one where physical design is opened up to the masses in the same way that digital design is becoming more accessible than ever. You can learn more about Go VR’s work, which includes virtual walkthroughs for architects, on their website: worldwithoutarchitect.com.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Hand Capture

A new motion capture and animation plugin for Autodesk MotionBuilder 2016, Hand Capture lets you “capture hand and finger movement in real time directly inside MotionBuilder.” These movements can then be assigned to the hands or fingers of 3D characters, or a wide variety of other object properties.

Requires: Windows, Autodesk MotionBuilder 2016 (trial available)

Handful of Tones

Handful of Tones is a music app that lets you control the volume and pitch of a chord with your hands. According to creator and game design student Miko Sramek, it “n an abstraction of the hands rather than a direct translation – allowing for a much more organic connection between the user and the experience. Using one’s own hands to find and create harmonies, instead of just using a slider in a program or a notation system, allows for broader exploration of what is possible with tones.”

Requires: Windows

HappyLittlePainter

If you’ve never watched Bob Ross smack his brush onto a canvas and instantly create a majestic evergreen, clear 27 minutes from your schedule and watch this video. You won’t be disappointed.

HappyLittlePainter is a simple, easy-to-use painting application inspired by Bob Ross and his happy little trees. Created by Finnish developer @unitycoder_com, it includes brush sounds and the ability to share your creations in an online gallery.

Requires: Windows, Mac, Linux with tool tracking enabled

#Headlight

Created by Cipher Prime based on their art show We’ve Traveled So Far, #Headlight is an impressively innovative use of Leap Motion’s image passthrough – generating a Tron-style stream of liquid light that streams across the 3D objects captured by the twin infrared cameras.

Just hold up your controller like a smartphone, cycle through colors and brightness, and snap a picture. You can even share it on Twitter @cipherprime with the hashtag #Headlight. If you’ve been looking for a new profile picture, this is the way to go.

Requires: Windows, Mac

Iterazer VR

From 2014 semi-finalist Felix Herbst (Prefrontal Cortex), Iterazer is a tool to play with complexity and create intricate sculptures of light and geometry in 3D space. Spawn fractals in midair and control them with telekinesis. Artwork can be saved as panoramic images, ready to be shared both in VR and as traditional images.

Creating Iterazer involved giving the player some superpowers, said Felix: “At first, I wanted users to directly grab the controls and move them around. However, that becomes very cumbersome if you don’t want to constrain their movement – if the user pushes them out of arm’s reach, they couldn’t be retrieved anymore. By anticipating what should be grabbed (a bit like pointing at something) and then putting the ‘force’ into the moved object, these constraints aren’t necessary anymore. The artist gets empowered beyond what would be possible with physical controls.”

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Jamming with Leap

The Hang is a musical instrument that superficially resembles a drum – though according to Wikipedia, its creators hate it when you call it a “hang drum.” Created by a team of four student developers, Jamming with Leap lets you create melodies on a virtual Hang.

“Our team (HisarCS.) consists of four high school students each thriving in their own given interests, music, 3D modelling and coding,” said Mert Bozfakioglu, one of the creators. “With this project, we intended to combine our interests into a product that everyone can enjoy. We learned how to use Unity, code in C#, design in Autodesk Maya, and use a Leap Motion sensor. This project was hard for all of us but with research that lasted for hours and endless nights of coding, we managed to create our first instrumental project.”

Requires: Windows, Mac, Linux

#LivingArchive

Originally presented as an interactive art installation in October in Birmingham, UK, The Phantom of JHB’s Sculpture #LivingArchive lets you navigate a 3D object in a hologram-like environment, using the classic Pepper’s ghost technique. The setup includes an Arduino, Macbook Pro, and a small LED Projector.

Requires: MacBook Pro, Arduino, Ultrasound sensor HC-SR04, Processing, Pure Data Extended

LMix

An open source 3D drop-music game, LMix lets you hit notes flying through space. This student project is fully open source with an MIT license, and includes songs from a number of different genres.

Requires: Mac, Windows

Lyra

Lyra is a virtual playground for musicians that lets you create music in VR. Created by Metanaut, a newly formed VR studio based in Taipei, Taiwan and Vancouver, Canada, it lets you chain chords, melodies, and instruments together in complex webs.

“We’re rethinking the music making process from the ground up for VR, rather than trying to translate existing paradigms to VR,” said Dilun Ho, one of the creators behind Lyra. “You can place and interact with customized instruments anywhere in 3D space. It’s a whole new fun immersive experience in composing and playing music.” You can sign up for their newsletter and follow the project at lyravr.com.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

PaintThrush

Built in your browser with the LeapJS library, PaintThrush is a peaceful art app that creates procedurally generated birds. It was created in a single night by Kate Compton, a PHD student at UC Santa Cruz who previously worked on SimCity and made the planets on Spore. “I like procedural generation,” she told us, “and letting the computer do the hard work.”

Recommended: Google Chrome

Pensato

Ableton Live is one of the most powerful digital tools in a musician’s arsenal. But what if you could bring that power into VR? Designed for people familiar with digital music workflows, Pensato “brings the musical performance capabilities of Ableton Live into a VR environment and allows an artist to see audio-reactive changes in their performance.” This means that you can interact with widgets in VR that correspond directly with musical sequences and audio parameters linked from Ableton Live.

Pensato was originally conceived as a project for creator Byron Mallet’s Master’s thesis – at the time, using a set of VR gloves. Having rebuilt Pensato for the 3D Jam, Byron said that “it continues to surprise me how difficult it is to design user interfaces in 3D space for VR applications. By removing the ability a mouse gives you to decide whether to interact or not interact with the environment, and instead have a hand that is constantly in an intractable state, forces you to consider how to layer and reveal parts of  the interface in order to reduce the chance of accidentally triggering elements.” This is a design challenge that VR developers will need to continue imagining their way through as VR continues to evolve.

Requires: Windows, Ableton Live (30 day trial available), Python 2.7, LoopMidi (optional), Showtime-Live (included in download)

Raybeem – Lightshow VR

Created by LA-based game developers Sokay, Raybeem is “a VR app by ravers for ravers.” You can listen to the music of your choice in a variety of mesmerizing environments that react to the frequencies of the audio.

“In creating Raybeem, I was experimenting with a familiar idea (music with visualizations) with a new context (virtual reality),” said developer Bryson Whiteman. “I could explain the idea to people, but showing them personally is when they really understood it. I didn’t expect to get such positive reaction from people from such a rough execution.” You can learn more about Sokay’s work (which includes “a game about a tank that shoots flowers that makes people happy and another about a cop eating donuts raining down from the sky”) by downloading their free zine from zine.sokay.net.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Rhythm’n Dream

While some music games are built mainly around player reaction times, @CarniBlood wanted to build a game that required understanding and following the beats. “For now,” he said, “it’s been particularly concocted as a tool for kids to help them learning music: entertaining enough to focus, rewarding enough to persevere, with adorable animals acting like a teacher, giving guidance only when needed.”

Requires: Windows

VREZ

Rez is a classic game for the Sega Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 that combined rail shooter and musical synthesis, leading to some trippy synesthetic sequences. Polish indie developer Mindhelix decided to bring that vibe into VR with their own rhythm-based action shooter. They plan to keep working on bringing new sounds and visualizations to the table, so be sure to leave comments on their game page.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

VR Guitar

Through Zach Kinstner’s #DevUp video series, we’ve watched VR Guitar evolve from an elegant concept to a powerful instrument that uses cutting-edge UX/UI design. While the virtual strings resemble a guitar, you can strum through dozens of different kinds of instruments! No previous experience with a real guitar is required, so dive in!

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

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VR has the power to transform our lives and connect us in new ways, while hand tracking lets you reach beyond the digital divide and take control. As part of our 3D Jam spotlight series, here are 17 utility demos that let you reach into a sea of data and extract its insights, explore a CAD prototype before committing it to a 3D printer, meet with people from around the world, and more.

3DUI: Three Dimensional User Interfaces

“A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good.” This is good advice that Dale Rosen took to heart in building 3DUI (Three Dimensional User Interfaces). Much like our UI Widgets, it’s a set of interface elements – switch, lever and potentiometer – that can be embedded in any virtual environment.

“Unless one is interacting with UI elements on a flat screen display, it makes sense to use three dimensional user interfaces.” This is just a sample of what Dale’s been working on for his undergraduate degree in digital media at York University’s Lassonde School of Engineering  in Toronto, Canada.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Build Chinese

Learning a language is hard, and learning the written form of the language is often harder still. Created by graphic designer and VR enthusiast Eirlys Jin, Build Chinese offers “a taste of the charm of Chinese culture” by teaching you the origin of a few Chinese characters. “This is my first experience making a game, and I’m happy with how cool it is! I will soon replace the black blocks with 3D models of Chinese paint brush calligraphy strokes. And then? Who knows what’s next for me as a VR developer!”

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

CAD & OBJ Viewer

3D printing has slashed rapid prototyping to days instead of weeks. But with the lines between the real and virtual worlds now blurrier than ever, could we cut it even further? Ethan Kinney thinks so. ”Designers must be able to quickly verify designs in order to get to production faster,” he says.

“While 3D printing cuts this time down, it can still take time and money to finalize a design. CAD & OBJ Viewer allows you to take a design directly from CAD into a virtual world where you can manipulate and verify the design without wasting precious time on rapid prototyping until you are ready.” This lets you feel out a design, adjust, and reload without committing it to plastic.

A mechanical engineer by trade, Ethan does a lot of CAD automation. ”I’ve gotten to the point in programming where I no longer give up when a program won’t do what I want, instead I find a way to make it do what I want. During the 3D Jam, I was surprised by the lack of tools like this. If I could have found a professional tool like this, I would have been begging my boss to buy it!”

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Car Showroom Explorer

Car Showroom Explorer is a framework that makes it easy to explore automobile models in three dimensions. Designed by a team of computer science students as their final-year project, it was created so that automobile manufacturers and independent 3D modelers can drop their own models in after requesting the source code.

Requires: Windows

FlickKeyboard

This simple utility app lets you type Japanese characters in midair. “To improve the usability of virtual keyboards for text input,” says creator Soma, “I investigated key selection methods and shapes and layouts of virtual keys, then proposed a new user interface design utilizing tip pinch, and implemented a prototype application. Please try a new text input interface using Leap Motion!”

Requires: Windows

Gesturio

Created by web developer Marat Surmashev, Gesturio is a web app that lets you learn sign language – in particular, the American and Russian alphabets. It even includes a sandbox mode featuring a variety of custom signs (e.g. Like, Dislike, Rock, Lizard, Spock) and the ability to add new signs. Best of all, it’s available for anyone to use under the MIT license.

Recommended: Google Chrome

HoloData

HoloData is a VR visualization tool that lets you experience three-axis graph data over time. Scroll through time to see the graph change and provide insights into data trends.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Leap Commander

Created by a team of students at McGill University in Montreal, Leap Commander is a tool written in Python that lets you encode any shell command (such as opening a browser and pointing to a webpage, checking for system updates, or launching a program) with your own hand signals.

This was a new experience for the team, says co-creator Nathan Smith, not least because they’re all physics students! “Throwing together a user interface and making something functional instead of just crunching numbers was a completely new experience for us.” Leap Commander makes it possible to build a database of hand signs and add snapshots to help your custom commander make better choices. “In this way, users can shape their own desktop experience by gesturing the commands they use most often in whichever way they like.”

Requires: Windows, Mac, Linux

Leap Opticals

Want to see what you look like in a pair of Wayfarers? Leap Opticals lets you swipe through a number of different eyewear options, along with facial mapping technology so you can preview your new look. It was created by Y.Srinivas Reddy, an self-taught web designer/developer and entrepreneur from India.

Requires: Webcam
Recommended: Google Chrome

Leapgim

Leapgim is an open source project that lets you transform hand variables into gestures and then create “recipes” by assigning actions to them. Created by three tech enthusiasts at Helsinki University, it started as a typical mouse replacement app, but quickly grew from there.

“Leap Motion enables new ways of using our devices but  we still unconsciously use the mouse and keyboard as a model, missing potentially intuitive solutions,” the team told us. “The current prototype can already be used to control the computer and run custom scripts. We’ve experimented with home automation and using IFTTT, but with creative implementation it could seamlessly connect our numerous interfaces with effortless gesturing.”

Requires: Windows

Lucidigital Virtual Workspace

Like many VR developers, @JoshuaCorvinus is already living in the future – reality just needs to catch up. His 3D Jam project is a small glimpse of that future. “It’s an exploration of one idealistic goal,” he says, “the ultimate workspace, infinite in size and form, and available on demand. Think of a future where you and your tools are one entity, where your symphonies and novels can be called up and molded at the speed of thought.”

Lucidigital is a VR/AR productivity prototype that builds on this idea of infinite space to create a broad canvas for your digital life. “If you squint at the crude floating windows, file browser, and room customization, something much greater emerges in the blur. Even if this particular project fizzles out – seeing the idea take shape is something that shouldn’t be missed.” You can check out some more of Joshua’s projects at jcorvinus.itch.io.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

NexusVR

From Unreal community plugin creator getnamo, NexusVR is a space between worlds, where you can move between different VR experiences. “Today we have VR experiences in disjointed sequences, taking off our headsets and rummaging through folders to go to the next virtual place,” says getnamo. “NexusVR changes that, allowing you to remain in VR and with your Leap Motion stay in complete control as you travel the verse.”

NexusVR’s interactions are built on the idea of natural haptic feedback with your bare hands. Tap your wrist and fingers to browse and select portals, then gesture to step through. You can even tap and scroll the web with your hands, and pull out links.

“With Leap Motion’s continual tracking improvements, it’s finally been possible to use natural haptic feedback. But I worried that it would be unreliable for touch targeting. To my surprise, I have never missed hitting my fingers or wrist in the Nexus, showing that my mind completely buys the virtual hands floating in front of me and I could use them as a reference for learned muscle movements.”

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

PacketVR

What is virtual reality’s version of “Hello World”? A cube that you can touch. According to creator James Hagerman, PacketVR is “the first SSH terminal built with VR in mind,” allowing this Hello World program to be written in any programming language. “It gives developers the tools they need to build interactive VR applications in the languages they already understand. Build away!”

James is a minimalist, programmer, engineer and hacker whose development experience spans microcontroller hardware, full stack web, 3D graphics, and beyond. You can follow him @jamisnemo or check out some of his other projects at zenpirate.com.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

SmartApp

Created by recent engineering graduate Bastien MaureilleI, SmartApp was a winner at last month’s SmartApp contest in Nice, France. He describes it as “an orientation table using the power of augmented reality to show you the names and various information about the points of interest around a given area – replacing the boring usual rock tables. So if you are a techie passionate about traveling and tourism, you should give it a try!”

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift, Homido HMD (optional), trinusVR

Virtual Real Meeting

Virtual Real Meeting is a collaborative virtual environment designed for one of the classic visions of VR – meetings at a distance. Built by a three-person team from São Luís, Brazil, the demo is designed on a networked hand sharing concept that makes it easy to communicate and manipulate commonly shared data. Up to 16 people can connect to a session and present slideshows, videos, drawings, task lists, and charts with their own personalized data.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

VRTheatre

Want to watch your favorite movies in VR? From the team at Eye Create Worlds, VRTheatre is a hybrid reality media player application powered by VLC. You can watch videos in a variety of simulated environments, using intuitive hand controls and a virtual remote control. The demo even uses Leap Motion’s passthrough mode to bring your media into augmented reality.

According to the developers, “being able to view your videos but also keep complete situational awareness is a really incredible and useful ability to have. With VRTheatre, we hope to provide an application people will want to use daily.” You can follow their journey on Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

vrwm

“Over the next few years,” says itinerant geek Leonard Lin, “VR display density will approach (and of course, exceed) current monitor resolutions. Before that, VR will become a compelling alternative for productivity computing while traveling or commuting.

“We may end up spending the majority of time in these types of workspaces, so let’s try to experiment now to see what works (and what doesn’t!) sooner rather than later.” That’s why Leonard created vrwm, an open source app that begins to explore possible interactions as traditional windowed software transitions into “a 360-degree, z-capable, multi-modal input environment.” This early version includes browser windows and terminals.

Leonard is currently in Taipei, but that’s bound to change. Fortunately, you can always find him @lhl and occasionally on his blog at randomfoo.net.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

The post Reaching into 3D Data, Exploring CAD Designs, Virtual Meetings, and More appeared first on Leap Motion Blog.

Ever wanted to create islands with the sheer force of will, summon lightning with a gesture, or fight monsters? Check out these 12 demos from the 3D Jam that take you into new worlds of godlike power, magical curses, swords and sorcery.

Bat Touch

This is your chance to befriend and play with a curious creature of the night as a ghost trapped in a dark dungeon. Will he touch your heart, or will you break his? This VR demo includes some nice design touches like the bat’s eyes following your hands (plus a dark little joke at the end).

Bat Touch was created by John Bernhelm, a game and story designer at Telltale Games who recently helped create Tales from the Borderlands. His past work includes contributions to Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception and Dante’s Inferno. You can follow him @bernhelm or see his work at bernhelm.net.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Blink

Inspired by the Doctor Who episodes Blink and Last Christmas, this adventure game lets you switch between the real world and a dreamworld at will, using Leap Motion’s Quick Switch function. Defend against murderous slimes and conquer your nightmare.

Blink was created by a five-person team of creative coders, designers, and artists at York University in Toronto, Canada – Danning Lu, Lalaine Ulit-destajo, Luke Lu Li, Rose Mengmei Zhou, and Youhan Guan.

Requires: Windows, Mac, Oculus Rift

IslandofZeus

Become Zeus with his last blank canvas – a small empty island. Make it rain to make the grass and trees grow, form hills and mountains, create humans and watch them fight battles, then destroy everything with the might of your hands and Zeus’ trademark lightning bolt.

Requires: Windows, Mac, Linux

Le Knight Marionette

Ever played with a marionette and imagined that the little puppet is fighting monsters? In Le Knight Marionette, you must stand firm and defend a sacred space by fighting monsters with your sword or shooting fireballs. The game was created by Hungarian developer Tonuzaba, who builds games, interactive installations, and Android apps (including the popular Photo Warp).

Requires: Windows, Mac, Linux

Midas

Want to be unfathomably rich? Step into a bleak vision of endless riches with Midas, where you become the king with the power to turn anything around you to gold. “Imagine transforming the whole world into that particular shiny metal which holds the very notion of value,” says designer Peter Klinkon, whose company kernel-image creates digital content for the emerging virtual world. “How will it change the way you feel about yourself and the world you live in?”

Requires: Windows, Mac

Neos: The Origin

From the creator of Sightline: The Chair and World of Comenius (which took third place in last year’s 3D Jam), Neos: The Origin gives you godlike powers with the ability to summon an island from the sea and watch nature grow from your hands.

“Combining your input with randomized procedural generation, no two elements will look alike, yielding a natural look for the scenery,” says creator Tomáš “Frooxius” Mariančík. “Would you prefer to work at night? Just move the Sun over the horizon with a touch of your fingertip. Neos: The Origin showcases only a snippet of what’s in development. Soon you will be able to create your own vegetation ‘genomes’ or leave it to evolutionary algorithms, invite your friends and create together, create buildings, objects, easily add interaction by ‘3D programming’ and much more!”

The demo also features a newly adapted grab-and-pulled locomotion method, which Frooxius has dubbed “The Holosphere.” He says “when I tested it on my nausea-prone colleague, it completely prevented nausea for him (I compared without the holosphere to be sure), both for moving and rotating. I’ve wanted to implement this method for months, but didn’t get a chance, so it was a pleasant surprise to see that it was working so well.”

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Pawn

In this desktop game, you manipulate a lowly mortal pawn into embarking upon a journey through a miniature landscape. Guide its progress through a dangerous world, gather energy from ancient obelisks, and bring down powerful blasts of energy from on high.

Pawn was created by Adrian Phillips, a Master’s student at UC Santa Cruz’s Digital Arts and New Media program, where he works in the creation of emergent gameplay narratives. Check out his work at adrianmphillips.com or on Twitter @adrianmphill.

Requires: Windows, Mac

Shards of Levitaria

Shards of Levitaria is a first-person tower defense game where you play a nearly omnipotent combat mage. Monsters and beasts are flooding into your sacred home base, trying to create something strong enough to kill you.

Maximilian Krauss, the game’s producer and programmer, has been working on Shards of Levitaria in one form or another since March. The 3D Jam version was created with a team of students from Macromedia University in Stuttgart, Germany. You can follow their progress as they continue building it into a fully fledged demo on YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Toothunt

Designed with Leap Motion’s tool tracking technology, Toothunt lets you fight creepy fairies using a magically charged wand that fires bursts of energy. “We noticed that the tool tracking is very precise and fast, so an idea with a wand and fairies was the first that came to our minds,” says Miroslaw Sokol, who created the game with his brother.

“We both are graphic designers, home-grown developers and passionate gamers. My brother is more 3D modeller and artist and I’m more into programming. However we split the job on this game equally so I also did some graphic stuff and my brother designed the base of the engine.” You can follow Miroslaw on Twitter @miroanywaay or check out his Blender sketchbook and website.

Requires: Windows

Touch of Death

In Touch of Death, you’re the god of death, whose hands will kill anything they touch. Now that your beautiful love Vicky is under siege by goblins, it’s time to put your powers to the test. But whatever you do, don’t touch her!

“I work in sales, but I love to play games,” says Vicky (the game’s creator, not the besieged damsel). “I had a dream to create a game by myself. I studied under Nick Mitchell at the China Virtual Reality Institute of Technology for 5 weeks to learn how to make games using Leap Motion and Unity.”

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Warlock VR

Did you ever want to become a powerful mage and cast reality-shattering spells? It’s possible with Warlock VR, the latest creation from Storm Bringer Studios, who built last year’s 3D Jam semi-finalist demo Magicraft. “We’re living in an incredible time where we can dive into fictional universes and fully experience presence in seconds,” says Irakli Kokrashvili, the CEO and co-founder of the Georgian game studio.

“Here you sit before your computer, gazing at a flat screen, and in a few moments you are inside a magical world, casting spells, naturally using your own hands. Image Hands in VR mode is an absolute gamechanger! It may seem like a little improvement but seeing your own hands in VR brings the whole experience to the next level.” You can follow Storm Bringer Studios’ progress on Facebook and Twitter.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Warmage

In Warmage, you’re a sorcerer contracted out to help an army of weaklings fight another army of weaklings. Discover new spells simply by using them, and try to hurt the red enemies without hurting your green allies.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

The post 12 Games to Unleash Your Magic Powers appeared first on Leap Motion Blog.

Outer space might be the final frontier – but there are many more frontiers lurking in our imagination. Check out 12 3D Jam games that let you escape (several!) exploding space stations, fight rival AIs, craft futuristic swords in virtual reality, and more.

C0NFL1CT

In a distant future, scattered across time and space, semi-digitized human beings fight for the last vital resource – processing power. C0NFL1CT is a turn-based virtual reality game prototype that adds a new dimension to classic chess-like gameplay, including new tactical possibilities.

According to creator Bertz (@cbrpnkrd), its “monochrome art style bears reference to industrial design, machine vision, and the works of Tsutomu Nihei. C0NFL1CT features a natural movement locomotion system that did not induce motion sickness and lets the player move in any direction, while requiring only 4 square meters of free space and the Oculus Rift DK2 headset.”

Bertz is a Russian computer science student at the University of Helsinki dedicated to VR/AR, cyberpunk, and rock’n’roll. You can check out his work on his blog and 3D printer Shapeways shop.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Equator Hights

An intense sci-fi version of Simon Says, Equator Hights throws you into deep space, where you must single-handedly rescue your mission by destroying your space station.

“It’s the first Oculus Rift game that lets you space walk outside unprotected from deep space!” says creator Mike Hibbert, who’s been developing software for over 24 years in an alphabet soup of languages. He’s most well-known for his YouTube channel, which offers over 13 hours of free tutorials in Python and Django development.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

In Space, No One Can Hear You Dance

Do you like space, dancing, and saving the human race from extinction? In this universe, dance is the ultimate source of renewable energy, and your hands are in the groove. “I was working in the world of software engineering for over a decade when I realized that all I ever wanted to do was make games,” says creator Carleton Di Leo (@PixelshotGames). “I decided it was time to quit my full time job and start Pixelshot Games.”

Writing about his 3D Jam development experience on Gamasutra, he says that working with the absence of tactile feedback was an interesting challenge. “I decided to have the player follow instructions with their hands, swiping up/down/left/right, based on a screen inside the VR world. The result felt more natural because the interaction was a 1-to-1 match.”

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Interns in SPAAACE

Interns in SPAAACE is a cooperative multiplayer game where you must work together to prevent your space station from exploding by preventing resources from falling to zero. One player is the Astronaut, who navigates around the space station and can repair modules based on the Operator’s instructions. The Operator can see which modules are broken and where the station resources lie.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Mobius

Take control of your ship’s arsenal with your bare hands! Mobius is a fast-paced retro arcade game where you shoot down enemies at lightning speed. Rack up epic high scores with consecutive kills and dodge incoming attacks.

Requires: Windows

Smithereens

One of the world’s most ancient and revered professions has been reimagined with Smitheerens – a virtual reality blacksmithing game. Dive into an extraordinarily interactive sci-fi world, complete with buttons, levers, hammers, sanders and laser cutters.

“You’re given a rich environment brimming with details, and a game which presents both its world and instructions to you in a way that takes full advantage of virtual reality,” says long-time game modder Kevin Brock, best known for his work in the Elder Scrolls series.

“I’ll be honest, this was the first time I’d ever had exposure to the Leap Motion Controller. I was a complete novice starting out. After tweaking the settings a bit, what surprised me the most was the robustness of it. I was worried that I couldn’t put in many of the features I wanted to, but it accommodated a lot of the more unusual designs I had planned, which was very nice.”

Kevin recently made the transition into full-time game design, and Smithereens is actually a spinoff of a larger sci-fi RPG currently under development – dubbed Nanosteam.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

SPACEHIKER: A Zero-G Adventure

Our love of exploding space stations continues! In zero gravity, walking is pretty much impossible. SPACEHIKER: A Zero-G Adventure puts you in the spacesuit of an astronaut trying to escape a dying space station. Push and pull yourself through the environment before the station is destroyed.

SPACEHIKER is the creation of Portland, OR indie game developer Matthew Cheifetz (@matteumayo). “I’ve always loved gaming, game design, and game development, and I am thrilled to be here taking part in the dawn of virtual reality. I’m currently 100% devoted to VR, and I plan on releasing numerous VR games and experiences in the coming months.”

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Spaceship Repair

Your spaceship has been severely damaged, and the clock is ticking! Repair your ship in this fast-paced puzzle game by replacing broken parts within 90 seconds, or your ship will… explode! Spaceship Repair was created by a team of students from the Abertay University in Dundee, Scotland.

“We formed this team specifically for this Jam, and now we’re all good friends!” says producer/designer Gerard McCullough, who built it with fellow students Cass Bennett, Jo Dyer, Aaron Humphreys, Adam McArthur., Craig Smith, and Andrew Dodds.

“We first decided to take part because we wanted more game development experience coming away from university, as we all graduate (hopefully!) at the end of this year. We’re all pleased with how the game turned out – sure, it wasn’t exactly the game we set out to make (we were hoping to build with VR), but nevertheless we’re all proud of it.”

Requires: Windows, Mac, Linux

Spiders of Mars

A mix of old-school gaming (think Tempest and Space Invaders) and cutting-edge controls, Spiders of Mars is an endless shooter where you square off against an ever-increasing horde of robot spiders. Blast them away with nerves of steel and quick reflexes!

“With modern tools, you can make a moderately polished piece of entertainment in an extremely short time,” says Dustin Adair (@scaryrobotgames). He completed Spiders of Mars in only 8 days. A mobile developer, Dustin has also worked as a character animator in Hollywood for the last 15 years. He’s animated Cylons, Terminators, Transformers, the Flash, and even Halo’s Master Chief.

Requires: Windows

The Courier

Neither snow nor rain… nor firewall nor deadly computer viruses? You are the Courier, a digital “paperboy” who delivers content to its destination. Grab hold of your digi-cycle to ride through the grid, solve firewall puzzles with hand gestures and data orbs, and take down dangerous viruses with your antiviral powers. No two missions are ever the same, as the grid, firewalls, and viruses are procedurally generated each time.

Like many indie developers, Thunder Egg Concepts (@thundereggco) is built on a lifelong love of games. “I started by dabbling in story, design, music, and art. But I didn’t know where to go from there. In college, I ended up studying electrical engineering. In the professional world, programming became a big part of my everyday life. In 2014, a friend of mine told me I should try a global game jam…. I jumped in without knowing anyone or anything about game development. Since then I’ve learned so much and continue to learn more.”

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

TVRD

In 2035, artificial intelligences compete in a battle simulation known as TVRD to spur the next stage of digital evolution. When the battle begins, each AI is given a tower to stand on. Your goal is to eliminate competing AI by shooting their towers and getting them to fall off. You can also protect against attacks with force fields. The latest version includes online match mode, so you can prove your worth against fellow humans!

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Virtual HOTAS

Soar among the stars and steer around asteroids in this experimental VR prototype, which uses the Leap Motion Controller facing upwards from your desk to create virtual Hands On Throttle-And-Stick (HOTAS) controls.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

The post 12 Explosive Sci-Fi Games appeared first on Leap Motion Blog.

Want to solve a murder mystery or explore ways to sketch through 3D space? Check out 11 3D Jam games that reinvent classic puzzle mechanics or unlock new ways to find hidden solutions.

Adventure of Ball

Rotate a maze to help a ball roll through and escape within 100 seconds.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Cube Simulator

Solve the scrambled cube by returning it to its original configuration.

Requires: Windows

David Slade Mysteries: Prologue Chapter

You’re a rookie homicide detective, called to investigate a complaint at a nearby apartment. Solve a decades-old mystery and catch a killer before he takes another life. Created by Gear Worx Productions (@GWPGearWorx), this prologue chapter (dubbed “Apartment 202”) is a small sample of an upcoming game series, focused on Slade’s quest to uncover the details of his sister’s mysterious death.

“Apartment 202 was was the first ever game I designed from the ground up to incorporate a new hardware device,” says Gear Work CEO Steve Adamson. “I honestly never heard of the Leap Motion Controller until someone posted on Facebook about the 3D Jam. This has honestly taught me a lot about integrating a new API. Next up, VR!” You can dive deeper down the rabbit hole and try the first full-length David Slade Mysteries game, Memories Of The Past, at www.davidslademysteries.com.

Requires: Windows

HellVibe

Solve the demonic puzzle box to set yourself free from an astral prison in this Hellraiser and Myst-inspired game from Pavel Laurs, the founder and developer at Eligo Games.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Highbury Demo

What if crime scene investigators had the power to look through time? In Highbury Demo, you can rewind and fast-forward through time to discover and investigate clues that will lead you to the solution. It was created by game developer Puya Dadgar, who has worked on different PC, mobile, and AAA console games for more than a decade.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Leap in the Clouds

A simple skill game where you must roll a ball from the green flame to the red flame.

Requires: Windows

Leap into the Hole

In this VR puzzle game, you rotate a shape to fit into a grid of cubes. Kaiyuan Ping is a 19-year-old indie developer and Sword Art Online fan who got hooked on virtual reality after seeing demos like ElementL: Ghost Story at Unity 2015.

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Rayhands

In this tiny experimental game, you must “earn your hands” over time by building a set of hand skills. Move around in a dark playfield lit by real-time lighting, and play around with hand interactions on micro- and macro-levels. By directing rays of light, you can solve puzzles that would be impossible in real life.

Rayhands creator Peter Thor (@peterthor_se) lives in Sweden with his wife and two kids. By day, he’s the CTO of Omnifinity, a company creating a solution for navigation in VR. He’s also CEO of his AR and VR software consultancy, Vicator. “Being an engineer by profession I have since childhood been fascinated by computers and creation of hard and soft artifacts using programming. I look upon coding almost as an art form that helps me to unleash creativity and stress.”

“Rayhands emerged close to the end of the Jam in which I sought to prototype some interaction schemes I’ve had in mind for a puzzle game. I seeked a way of manipulating objects in close and far vicinity at the same time and settled for the concept seen in the contribution with different skills attached to your left and right hand.”

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Superstruct

From Graffiti 3D creator Scott Kuehnert (@jscottkuehnert), Superstruct is an art game that combines drawing in 3D and first-person movement to allow users to explore the landscapes of their creations. Discover new ways to move your vehicle to the end goal platforms – there are as many as you can imagine! Players can scale up to the size of mountains and draw skyscraper-sized strokes or down to the size of an ant and draw tiny details. Every stroke becomes a tangible part of the world that can be interacted with via your vehicle.

“I love experimenting with virtual and augmented reality technologies because I think they’re some of the most versatile media ever created,” says Scott, “and their rules and uses are still up in the air. Exciting possibilities and applications are discovered daily, and it seems like we’re still scratching the surface of the potential for these technologies.”

“One thing I learned this year is that subtle details break usability in VR, and tutorials are not easy to get right. I initially had players start in vehicle view, and I found that they were disoriented by the sparseness of external details in the simple maps featured in Superstruct. It took players a moment to understand where they were, what they were looking at, etc. However, when I started players in draw mode, they seemed much more comfortable with the setting and got the interactions much quicker. They could overview the map and have expectations about what they would see in vehicle mode before shrinking down to move around, and nobody I tested it with reported feeling disoriented.”

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

The Maze

Find the magic keys to unlock the portals and find your way out of the maze. But things get trickier the further you go – fake keys, hidden passages, and a monster that just waits and watches

Requires: Windows

The Room of Mysteries: Call of the Tribal Mask

The abandoned room in the old hostel holds many mysteries. Who lived there? How can you turn on the TV? What’s the deal with the tribal masks on the wall? Decipher all the puzzles to unlock the safe sitting on the bed before the clock runs out.

TRoM:CoTM was written and directed by a pair of programmers, @HalamaDariusz and @FilipLoster. They used open source 3D models to create a claustrophobic “lock in” experience. “We had a ton of fun while making this game, including times when our disembodied hands of destruction were flying around the scene. We sincerely hope that you, dear player, will enjoy it as well.”

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

The post 11 Mind-Bending Puzzle Games appeared first on Leap Motion Blog.

Want to play the latest 3D Jam demos, but don’t have an Oculus Rift? Check out these 12 games built for Windows PCs, including the power to create (and shatter) glass animals, the Zen apocalypse, and a rousing game of minigolf.

Basketball Shoot

A simple game prototype that lets you toss the ball through the hoop.

BlockStopper

A block-smashing game of handball.

Box A Chocolate

Relive an I Love Lucy classic by placing small chocolates into boxes moving on a conveyor belt. Fortunately, you can control how fast the chocolates arrive (though you can’t stop them)!

Box A Chocolate was created by Toby Breeden (@AnyWorldGames), who describes himself as “a 50-year-old child of the 80s who stood in line for three days for the 1am premiere of Empire Strikes Back. I have been neck deep in PC computers since I was 17. I have 18 dogs and 1 wife on 5 acres of woods near Mt. Rainier. I make odd art with my hands when computers make me crazy…. The technology I’m trying to use nowadays is straight out of the science fiction I read as a child. Which is awesome!”

Faster VR

Despite the name, Faster VR is a Windows desktop game that puts you in the driver’s seat of a futuristic vehicle complete with laser-mounted cannons, shields, and turbo booster jets.

Fingerspeller

Originally intended to be a VR experience, VR Fingerspeller is a light demo that lets you spell out words using sign language. Each word you spell is attached to a 3D model of a fantastic creature. By recognizing all the letters in the word, you can unlock the creature.

“We think that virtual reality can bring a new level of communication between all people with no regard to their languages or disabilities,” say Alexey Prihodko and Andrey Vabishchevich. Alexey is an award-winning deaf athlete and postgraduate student from Russia who researches gesture recognition, while Andrey is a VR developer. “We hope that our developments in this area will bring a new instrument to solve the communication problem between hearing and deaf people.”

Garfunkel

Inspired by the classic memory game Simon, Garfunkel challenges you to follow the audio sequence as long as possible, combining 3D controls with old-school sounds and visuals. It was created by independent game developer David Erosa (@david_erosa).

Glass Menagerie Wallflower

Create a living glass menagerie and shatter them with your bare hands! In Glass Menagerie Wallflower, you can create a random glass animal each time you touch the terrain with your right index finger. Smash them, shoot them, or explore your living painting.

Lost World

Imagine a girl in a post-apocalyptic ocean, surrounded by the wreckage of her world. Luckily, the wind is there to accompany her in her travels. Manipulate the wind to guide the girl through her surroundings and find enlightenment.

Lost World was created by Brian Clanton (@brian_clanton), a software engineer at Zynga in San Francisco. “I enjoy hackathons because they give me a departure from my normal coding tasks that leads to accelerated learning.” You can follow Brian on LinkedIn and GitHub.

Minigolf for Leap Motion

Line up your sights, raise your putter, and get one under par in this serene golf game created by Paul “Puzzabug” Eckhardt. Here’s how he describes the experience of testing out his 3D Jam creation:

“I was one under par, overlooking the final hole. My raised hand orbited the camera cautiously into position and paused before lowering in the putter. Any shot could sink in theory, but making par would be fantastic in practice. I flicked my wrist gently – perhaps too gently. It stopped just above the hill, still in line with the flag. Perhaps one over par wouldn’t be that bad. Then I saw it – it was still rolling! Slowly gathering speed, curling over the hill, and PAR!”

Paul has been playing with motion control since 2011, and made this game with his friends Rhynri and Karate Pawn to learn Unreal Engine. You can see more at  bricklightstudios.com/motioncontrol.

PunchyBallTime

Punch the ball into the properly colored bin in this simple game prototype.

Sp33d Stax!

Will you set a speed stacking record? Stack all six cups as quickly as possible for the high score.

Tennis for the Blind

If you think playing tennis is easy, try closing your eyes. Created by Nick Zorbas (@nick_zorb), Tennis for the Blind is an experiment in building an enjoyable, addictive gaming experience that doesn’t rely on graphics. “Made to be fully enjoyed even by blind people and people with fine motor skills problems,” he says, “Tennis for the Blind proves that solutions such as Leap Motion and auditory interfaces can make a difference for all! Are you up for the challenge?”

Nick is a software engineer at SciFY NPO, and in his free time is a game programmer, gamer, and puzzle solver. He’s currently pursuing an MSc at Harokopeio University of Athens, where his interests include data mining and artificial intelligence.

The post 12 New Games for Windows: Glass Animals, Alien Planet Racing, and More appeared first on Leap Motion Blog.

Whether you want to battle an implacable mountain or fast-moving web goblins, the 3D Jam has you covered! Check out 12 more desktop games, including a divine music game and table hockey reimagined.

Bit-Hockey

Pit your elite table hockey skills against a robotic opponent.

Requires: Windows, Mac

Burger Flip

Created by longtime full-stack engineer Joe Janiga (@joseph_janiga), Burger Flip was “developed for pro gamers. Ya know those hard working gals and guys? They come home from the office after a long day of competitive MOBAS and just want to flip hamburgers to take their minds off of their Elo rating.” Now they can flip burgers and avoid the hot spots on the grill.

By night, Joe is an aspiring indie game dev working under the moniker Fire Hazard Entertainment. He loves NodeJS & C#, hates Simple Object Access Protocol, and is currently working on an online real-time multiplayer platformer to debut late next year.

Requires: Windows, Mac, Linux

GnomeBall

Swipe at a cute gnome to make him fly through the field goal or slide into the endzone! Created by video game design teacher Brian Foster (@brianfoster), GnomeBall includes fun touches like two-player mode and having the crowd do The Wave when you score a touchdown.

“The excellent part about the Leap Motion Controller is that anyone can try it,” says Brian. “I have many friends who aren’t comfortable with a controller – but there are no buttons with the Leap Motion and nothing to pick up.” Brian recently founded Quickdraw Studios, a game company that aims to virtual reality in custom-themed arcade cabinets around Wichita, Kansas.

Requires: Windows, Mac

Godly

In Godly, you play a god who takes care of a girl by playing music to modify the world. Spoiler alert: at some point, you get to decide if you want to break divine law for the sake of the girl, or accept what has happened – a choice that will affect your destiny as well.

Daniel Wilches has been a software developer for roughly 14 years, and currently develops games for his PhD research studies. “I especially like this kind of programming because you can mash up graphical art, music, and programming, so now I’m trying to get better at the art part in order to create even better games.”

Requires: Windows, Mac, Linux

Good Morning

Created by UX/UI designer Aaron Faucher (@f0sh_), Good Morning is an experiment in visual affordance. The experience is centered on two objects essential to the 21st-century morning experience: the coffee mug and the smartphone.

“The coffee mug, designed to sit comfortably in the physical human hand, presents novel challenges when represented in virtual space,” he says. “Good Morning’s dry, spacious ambience encourages meditation on the complexity of replicating a simple physical act (holding a coffee cup) in the future environment of AR/VR. Meanwhile, notifications pour out of the adjacent smartphone. Will the digital future proposed by AR/VR be stimulating, or overwhelming?”

Based in Chicago, Aaron’s work is focused on augmented reality and affective computing. He heads up the “UX/UI for AR/VR” initiative at design bootcamp Designation Labs (@designationio) and produces music as Pride & Joy.

Windows, Mac

Grandmas And Goblins

The people of your town have been transformed into grandmas and goblins! Punch the attacking goblins but don’t hit the grandmas in this web-based game.

Warning: the ending screen has a slight screen flicker, which may be a problem to people with epilepsy.

Green Thumb

Anyone who has ever grown a garden knows that it takes time, patience, and hard work to get a flower to grow. But what if you had all the power in your hands to grow flowers instantly? In this world, the slightest touch causes plants to grow, so you can cultivate your virtual garden.

Green Thumb was created by game developer MJ (@codemaster1617) and Jacob Getz, who both hail from Austin. MJ is a gameplay scripter at Certain Affinity with experience in everything from VR to the Virtuix Omni. Jacob works in Operations at the Texas Advanced Computer Center. A frequent game jammer, he composed the music.

Requires: Windows

Leap Kick!

Play a goalkeeper and try to stop all the balls you can. The balls are fired randomly from a cannon, so be quick and rack up as many points as possible.

Requires: Windows, Mac

Leap Mountain

In the world of gaming, conflict often centers on enemies trying to kill you. But in the world of mountain climbing, there is no enemy – only yourself! Leap Mountain is a survival test where you must take the climb one handhold at a time, or risk a hilarious (but painful) death sequence. Based in Sydney, Australia, indie developer Mode Games previously built three games for the Kinect and is now turning towards building with Leap Motion and VR.

Requires: Windows, Mac

LEAP To The Future

The date is October 21, 2015, and your hoverboard is ready to go! Created in the last 5 hours of the 3D Jam, LEAP To The Future combines ‘80s retrofuturism with 3D steering controls. The game was built by Finn Staber, a programmer/designer at Portalarium working on Shroud of the Avatar, who also helped as a programmer on 4 other teams during the Jam.

Finn is one of the leading proponents of AR & VR development in the Austin tech scene, and has helped launch multiple successful tech startups. He organizes tech meetups for the Austin Unity developer group, and has helped the VRAustin meetup group grow to the tip of the VR spear. Finn has a diverse background in animation, voice acting, tech-art, 3D modeling, music, interactive design, computer science, and has given talks on building with Leap Motion and Unity.

Requires: Windows

Mr. Box

Mr. Box is going through a bit of a rough patch in his life, and although he’s too proud to admit it, he’s in need of some help. As a worker at an unemployment office, you’ll find that he may come off a bit prickly at first, but he has a lot to offer once you get to know him.

“One thing I’ve learned over my career so far is that it’s super rare to find other people who treat the work as a truly collaborative effort,” says co-creator Bryant Drew Jones (@sprybry). “It’s almost like searching for a spouse. When you do find that special someone who you adore working with, hold onto them tight and never let them go!”

Bryant found that special person in Diego De la Rocha (@diegodelarocha), an ex-hardcore gamer who has been involved in animation for over 6 years. Bryant runs indie studio Artbit with another longtime collaborator.

Requires: Windows, Mac

Span

Span is a twitchy arcade game where you must prevent lines from escaping by eating them with your fist. The more you eat, the more complex you become, increasing the difficulty and your score. If you lose all of your sides, the game ends! Span was created by @henwuar and @jctwood, a pair of student programmers who have been jamming for four years and love creating small, polished experiences with strange graphics and sound.

Requires: Windows

The post 12 New Desktop Games: Godly, Mountain Climbing, and More appeared first on Leap Motion Blog.

Shoot ’em ups, games of skill, racing games, retro demos, and more – check out 13 arcade-style 3D Jam projects.

There are just 10 more days to vote for your favorites! Cast your votes at itch.io/jam/leapmotion3djam – just login/register and go to the project’s 3D Jam submission page to submit a star rating.

Arcade Room

Looking for a place to have fun and slap people around? Play darts and test your strength in Arcade Room from Andrei Nistor (@SlapPunchThrow). Just remember that abuse won’t be tolerated, and you might bite off more than you can chew. Andrei is an avid gamer and coder who tinkers with game development at night.

Requires: Windows

Avoid the Cubes

Avoid the Cubes is a fast-paced arcade-style game that’s both easy to play and difficult to master. Use your finger to dodge incoming cubes, while simultaneously collecting as many coins as you can. Creator William Chilcote is a civil engineering student who loves to build games in his spare time.

Requires: Windows, Mac

Leap Carnival

This multiplayer collection of carnival-themed minigames was built as a party game for up to 4 friends. It features unique characters and hands for each player – Weird Business, Bling Bling, Ruby Slippers, and ??? – and balancing, juggling, shooting gallery, and skeeball.

“I’ve been interested in game design all my life, and am currently studying in my final year of games programming,” says Matthew Cormack (@johnjoemcbob). “I went through several iterations of the shooting alone (thanks to the other members of the Abertay Game Development Society for testing and giving me feedback each week of the jam)!  You can check out the iterations I went through in more detail on my blog.”

Requires: Windows, Mac, Linux

Leap Motion Zombie Shooter

You’re a cyborg, equipped with the latest high-tech weapons and just one mission – defend the final human holdouts by killing as many zombies possible in the given survival time. Leap Motion Zombie Shooter includes a two-player mode so you can complete with your friends.

Requires: Windows

mikeNspired Shooter

This visually stunning demo takes you through a mystical world filled with terrifying monsters. Practice at the gun range, then fight enemies and change the flow of time. The creator is currently running a mini-contest where the player who posts the highest scores by January 1st will receive a prize (learn more on the game page).

Requires: Mac, Windows

Racing Car

Speed down the highway, gather coins, and destroy obstacles with a sniper scope.

Requires: Windows

REVOLVR

Upload yourself into a classic arcade game from the ‘80s with this top-down VR shooter, complete with head-mounted lasers and enemy mechs in space. REVOLVR was created by Keith O’Toole, a game designer/developer based in Dublin, Ireland.

Requires: Windows

Space Invaders 3D

Blast away invading aliens in this VR take on an arcade classic.

Requires: Mac, Oculus Rift

Swarmageddon

Created by Brandon Roberts (@brandmooffin), Swarmageddon is a gaming prototype “meant to bring out the intense, fast-paced, top-down shooter style that we love to enjoy playing while making you feel more immersed using the Leap Motion Controller to give an almost hands-on experience.” You can follow more of Brandon’s developments on his Hackster page, where he often posts IoT hacks.

Requires: Windows, Mac

t3Drino

A twist on Tetris, t3Drino incorporates both physics and the Leap Motion Controller. Survive as long as possible by clearing rows using the falling tetrominos. If a tower of tetrominos gets too tall, the game ends! How long can you survive?

Requires: Windows

Walt Kart

Get behind the wheel and drive through a minimalist VR world.

Requires: Windows

Wheel Smith and the Willchair

Previously featured on our blog, Wheel Smith and the Willchair is an early demo that features an experimental locomotion scheme. Use your telekinetic powers to complete various challenges in a virtual gameshow.

“One thing that surprised me while developing Wheel Smith was that young children sometimes understand VR a lot faster than adults,” creator Samuel (@Pancake_Storm) told us, “because they don’t know how a ‘normal game’ should work.” Samuel is an 18-year-old programmer and third-year student in the LBS Lunds game development program in Sweden

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Zombies Shall Not Pass!

The world is over, and it’s too late to be a survivor… You’ve already gotten infected! In Zombies Shall Not Pass, you’re a zombie leader conquering a survivors’ shelter. Ambush survivors and eat brains with your shambling hordes.

Creator Wengu Hu (@DGSpitzer) is a second-year MFA student at the School of Visual Arts. He’s been making games for 12 years, since junior high school, and has experience in digital painting, programming, and music composition.

Requires: Windows, Mac

The post Shoot Terrifying Monsters Or Become One in the #3DJam Arcade appeared first on Leap Motion Blog.

Faced with the challenge of creating a gritty digital feature film, Dog Eat Dog director Kenny Roy decided to use 3D motion control to replicate live-action filmmaking. His animation studio, Arconyx Animation, is using the Leap Motion Controller with a custom Maya plugin to give the film a “hand-held” tone. It’s a rough-and-tumble motif that aligns with the project’s central story arch: the dark underworld of dogfighting rings.

“The way we produced animation on this film, is we set up scenes almost like a live action set,” Roy explained. The Arconyx crew uses Leap Motion technology to replicate the quick, organic camera work that typically requires top-of-the-line motion capture systems and intensive keyframing produced by hand.

“We’ve written a custom pipeline, a plugin for Maya, that piggybacks on top of the Leap Motion plugin for Maya. The plugin basically creates an actual real-world position that we can record. So we are placing the camera and then using our hands to move the camera like a cameraman would on a live-action set. That way, if the characters are animating around, you can actually dolly around by moving your hand, you can rotate your hand and the camera points at the characters. This is akin to the technology that they paid a million bucks to develop for Avatar where they had digital cameras.”

This approach makes it possible for Arconyx to rapidly “prototype” a variety of different rough camera takes within minutes, before choosing the best one. “We can iterate so quickly that for us, we could use it on everything. It doesn’t matter if it’s a cartoon commercial for a kid’s toy or whatever, we’re always gonna throw a camera in there, ‘Leap it around,’ and then have like 20 different ideas that we can show before lunchtime.” Afterwards, they can apply smoothing and other techniques to bring their clients the level of camera control that they want.

From plugins for Autodesk Maya and MotionBuilder, to more lighthearted dog films, these are exciting times for 3D motion controls in the filmmaking industry. We can’t wait to see where small indie studios will take it next.

The post How Arconyx is Bringing Handheld Filmmaking to Digital Animation appeared first on Leap Motion Blog.

Are these the droids you’re looking for? Check out educational 3D Jam demos that take you to the center of the earth, or into the human body. Plus, 7 IoT experiments that bring us just a little closer to the future, including an experimental wheelchair.

Education Projects

ChemGrabLab

Imagine chemistry classes where, instead of watching videos of dangerous experiments, you get to try those experiments for yourself, such as seeing how alkali metals react with water – sometimes explosively! With an interactive simulation of a chemistry lab, you can try burning, exploding, irradiating, polymerizing, and more.

Discover what happens if you pour water into concentrated sulfuric acid. Learn all about the effects of super-cooling. Or even pour mercury all over a desk and see what happens! Grab it, throw it, pour it, play with it and have fun with science!

ChemGrabLab is the creation of Christine Hart (@dstrawberrygirl), a 15-year software industry veteran. “I’ve worked on front-end web applications, middleware, server software and databases, but the most fun I’ve had in recent years has been with the Unity game engine. I’ve been using Unity for over 5 years for developing 3D simulations and virtual world applications, data visualization solutions, and more recently for game projects.”

Requires: Windows, Mac

Earth Elevator

Earth Elevator lets you experience riding an elevator down into the center of the Earth. As you watch the kilometers tick by, you’ll get a visceral sense of how deep each layer is, and see the unique geology of each layer. The Earth Elevator makes several stops along the way to provide you with information and time to look around.

“For fun, I added a stranded alien at the center of the earth,” says Karen Bryla, a freelance writer and developer who regularly contributes to the VR development blog rifty-business.blogspot.com.

“If you wave to the alien, it gets on the elevator with you for the trip back up to the surface.  While I knew that in real life, riding an elevator with strangers can sometimes feel a bit awkward, I was still quite surprised with how much I experienced those same feelings of awkwardness in VR while riding an elevator with an alien.”

Requires: Windows, Oculus Rift

Nerves

Designed by a team of students at Game-U (@gameu_nj), Nerves is an intense visit to the operating room for a motion-control surgeon. Remove shrapnel from your patient’s back and get it into the tray before he succumbs to his injuries!

The game was developed by high school freshman Jules LeBrun (god of Blender and lead 3D modeler) and three 8th-graders – Ethan Rednor (lead texture designer), Sean Fuhrman (lead programmer, with a game in the App Store no less!), and Rinn Hughes (lead audio technician and music composer).

Requires: Windows, Mac, Linux

VRΩ

Shrink down inside a human body and wander through a respiratory tract to fight cancer cells. In VRΩ, you can use your hands to navigate through the lungs down to an individual cell level and cast rays from your palms to treat or destroy cancer cells.

VRΩ is the product of an impressive interdisciplinary team: a biologist, a 3D artist, two programmers, a game designer, and a project lead. “Our biologist Annett Kühnel explained to us how lung cancer cells can be detected and treated and how it actually looks once you are inside the body,” the VRagments (@vragments) team told us.

“Using her information, our 3D artist Jens Brandenburg was able to build 3D models in a believable way. Based on that information, our game designer Marcus Bösch  focused on the narrative. Two programmers, Stephan Gensch and Ronny Esterluss, worked on gesture detection, navigation, and development in Unity3D. Linda Rath-Wiggins brought the team together.”

Requires: Mac, Oculus Rift

IoT Projects

Highest Jockey

Control a Darby robot on the Raspberry Pi and a Rodeo machine with this project from Hirokazu Egashira and @routeflags. They form part of the unofficial Leap Motion Jp developers group.

HomeBright

HomeBright is an easy-to-built hardware project that lets you access convenient controls to your home automation. Using the Leap Motion Controller, you can control your home appliances from one place in your home using hand gestures. Creator Vincent Wong (@wesee) is a freelance mobile developer who currently works for a start-up called Payex PLT.

Laser Tanks!

Laser Tanks is an IoT robot game that uses the Leap Motion Controller for a realistic tank driver experience. “Placing your hands in positions similar to WWII Sherman driving and steering levers,” creator Sean McCormick (@corky2003) says, “the user controls his tank around obstacles and other opponents while shooting infrared beams to try and hit and destroy their enemies.”

Sean is a 20+ year software developer. When he’s not working for an online education company, he’s building IoT projects and devices, brewing beer, coaching soccer and teaching kids about the epic possibilities of technology.

LEAPing into Accessibility

For people with limited mobility, technology is a powerful force for independence. LEAPing into Accessibility is an experimental wheelchair interface that lets you navigate, as well as remotely access and control many household appliances, with simple gestures.

“As we spent lots of time working in the wheelchair, we began to gain a better understanding of the struggles that those who are wheelchair-bound have to face everyday,” says Akhil Veeraghanta, who created the project along with Steven Sonderhoff. Both senior-year students at Burnaby North Secondary School, they’ve been working on different projects together for years. They’re currently working on a 3D printer and designing their own electric longboards.

Quadrapus RC

Control robots with a flick of your hand with Quadrapus RC from Shane Celis (@shanecelis), an evolutionary robotics researcher turned gamedev. With his project, you can control a blue four-legged robot, or “quadrapus,” whose legs mimic your fingers. Beyond the virtual robot, you can also control a real Sunfounder robot.

Shane builds fun virtual robot toys that hint at artificial evolution, and runs a game developer meetup in Vermont. Check out his other quadrapus project, Quadrapus Sumo.

RAC-MAN

Another project from the Leap Motion Jp developers group, RAC-MAN is a virtual reality chasing experiment using an Arduino foot controller. It was created by Reiji Kawakami and @routeflags.

Remote Search and Disposal/Rescue Robot

“Integrating the Leap Motion Controller with hardware opens up an infinite realm of interactive 3D art, projects and possibilities, only limited by your imagination,” says Syed Anwaarullah (@anwaarulla). He’s a full-stack hardware/software/firmware developer, maker, speaker, and educator who loves tinkering with all things technical.

“By building this robot off the Raspberry Pi and WebIOPi IoT framework, I wanted makers, tinkerers, and artists to see how easy it is to build wireless gesture-controlled hardware and IoT integrations. I’ve been showing around many of my Leap Motion-controlled projects (both Arduino- and Raspberry Pi-based) at many conferences and events, and folks are simply amazed at how exciting and fun these integrations can get.” Along with his blog, Syed is also a two-time contributor to the Leap Motion blog.

The post 11 New #3DJam Demos: Droids and Discovery appeared first on Leap Motion Blog.

This year marks the 120th anniversary of L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat, an early piece of silent film footage that astonished (and by some accounts even terrified) its audience. Points of light on a canvas transformed into mortal fear. Since then, technology and technique have evolved in tandem – bringing us into greater heights of action and suspense, into deeper wells of horror and despair. For a couple of hours, our consciousness is swallowed up by the screen.

Great directors use lighting, angles, actions, and a variety of other techniques to create their greatest scenes. Every Frame a Painting, an online film analysis series, dives into some of these techniques. From movement in Kurosawa to the tight composition of Drive, camera angles and the constraints of the screen guide your gaze and understanding of the scene. Each frame really is like a painting.

But with the rise of cinematic VR, the frame around the painting is exploding off. The darkness of the cinema is gone. The lines between reality and fiction are disappearing. In some ways, we’ve stepped back 12 decades. We are the new sensory pioneers, shocked by the realism of the new medium.

The first and greatest change is presence. VR has the power to transport us into worlds of fantasy, and forget where we are. We can encounter Syrian refugees or Pixar-like animated creatures. Cinemas are setting up shop in the metaverse, so we can sit back and watch 2D film classics like our favorite Christmas movie (Die Hard, of course). Human beings are being filmed and rendered in engines like Unity with full 3D clarity.

Presence within the narrative is just one way that VR cinema is breaking the mold. (And while there are some massive artistic possibilities in ripping away the borders, there are also some huge challenges to spherical storytelling, nicely covered in this essay by VR photographer Scott Highton.) Instead of passively watching, we will now be able to control where we look.

The next evolutionary step is the power to reach out and influence how the story unfolds. This is one of the inspirations behind Oculus Story Studios’ Henry, where the character is brought to life so that it feels like he’s in the room with you. Sightline: The Chair is another experience that feels more like an art film or a trippy ride than a game.

This shift from watching to interaction demands some pretty exquisite scripting and storyboarding. Otherwise it runs the risk of feeling like a series of cutscenes, or an immersion-breaking vote for what Calculon should do next:

So what’s the next step? With hand tracking as the fundamental input for VR, there are some really exciting possibilities for film over the next 10 years. Not just reinforcing presence, not just pushing them forward, but discovering secrets and weaving them into a bolder vision of what film can be. Storytelling in the fourth dimension.

Imagine a drama that plays out across multiple dimensions, allowing you to jump forwards and backwards through time. Reaching out and grabbing a photograph to see a glimpse of a character’s past. Or switching between different character perspectives on the fly, like a fully interactive Rashomon. Uncovering Easter eggs and hidden clues that take you into strange rabbit holes. This is an incredible time for experimentation, and we can’t wait to see what projects will make it into the textbooks and college courses of 2025 as landmarks of the medium.

One approach that we found really interesting was last year’s 3D Jam winner, Aboard the Lookinglass. While it’s a puzzle rather than a movie, the demo has a really striking narrative device – looking into the past and future through your hands.

This kind of interaction has the potential to bring you closer to the experience by bridging gaps and seeing scenes in parallel. (Ancient spoilers ahead!) Fight Club with Tyler Durden, or without him. The Usual Suspects with Keyser Soze, or without him. Star Wars: Episode I with Jar Jar Binks, or without him. (Hey, we can hope.) Truth, lies, and everything in between, just beyond your hands.

Films on the big screen take you along for the ride. But with cinematic VR, we’re in control. We’d love to know where you think the future is headed – let us know in the comments section.

The post Storytelling in the 4th Dimension: What’s the Future of VR Cinema? appeared first on Leap Motion Blog.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is upon us. Everyone is having Star Wars fever, including me.

What I wanted to do is to find the easiest way to control a lightsaber just like they do in the movies. I bought my son a lightsaber toy at Toys ‘R’ Us, and wanted to introduce him to the world of Star Wars. (He’s 5 years old by the way.) I thought of different ways to do the trick, like hanging it on a ceiling and using gravity to pull down a lightsaber. Or maybe using strings to pull down and make it like a puppet.

Already being familiar with JavaScript, I started to look into NodeJS this year wanting to learn new technology. I was surprised to find out that there’s this emerging trend called NodeBots – using NodeJS to build robots. That sparked my interest. I’ve always wanted to learn about robotics but never had a chance. This is a good way to learn both.

I came across two frameworks – Johnny-Five and CylonJS. Johnny-Five makes it easy to work with NodeBots, while CylonJS has a bunch of platforms that can connect to NodeJS. And I was hooked. One of the platforms that CylonJS connects to is Leap Motion, and the idea came up. What if I used that to control my lightsaber? But then, how to make the thing move by itself?

Last year, I came across this platform called CloudBit, a module made by littleBits. LittleBits are kind of like Legos for electronic projects. Researching some more, I found out that they have an Arduino Bit. Arduino! Really? That’s cool. I have two kids (5 and 2 years old) and I wanted to teach them about programming. Realizing that they need to learn how to read before they can read code, I thought maybe I can show them the concepts. Electronics is a good way to show software development concepts. That’s where it all started anyway. My kids call littleBits “Tricks.” It’s all magic to them.

CylonJS offers a platform to connect to Arduino. Now I can do NodeJS and skip C++ and Arduino programming. I can just connect NodeJS to littleBits Arduino. LittleBits makes it easy to prototype stuff. They have these DC Motor Bit and Wireless Bits. It’s easy to connect stuff together, and it’s even easier to use Arduino with it. This gave me the idea to connect a DC Motor to the end of the lightsaber toy. It will make it spin – I just need to send the signal.

Here’s a tutorial on how to connect littleBits with NodeJS. It’s very easy to follow using Johnny-Five. Now, here’s a tutorial on how to connect to CylonJS to Arduino. The concepts that you learn from connecting Johnny-Five is the same as connecting CylonJS. Now it’s time to put them both together. Get data from LeapMotion. If data is valid, send a command to littleBits Arduino to spin the motors. That’s it. Nothing special. With 36 lines of code, I got blown away.

The Arduino bit is connected to a wireless transmitter bit. The wireless receiver is connected to a DC motor bit, then attached to the lightsaber via Lego Wheel. Add 9V battery power. It looks something like this:

Make sure to connect the Arduino to your computer and add USB Power.

Here’s how I connected it to the lightsaber:

Here’s the code that makes it all work (with the full source on GitHub):

Looking at the code (index.js), when I receive a “hand” from Leap Motion, I just get the hand.roll data. It will give me the roll rotation of the hand. Then I convert the value to between 0 to 256 and pass it to the LED-1 connector in CylonJS. The LED-1 is connected to Pin 5 of the Arduino.

To run this project, run

>>npm install

It will install all the necessary dependencies. Then, type

>>node index.js

LittleBits made it easy to put things together. CylonJS made it work with 36 lines of code. Amazing. Have fun! If you want to see my other projects, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel.

An earlier version of this post appeared on Ron’s Medium page, along with an additional guide on the littleBits website.

The post Control your Lightsaber with Leap Motion and littleBits appeared first on Leap Motion Blog.