Hot-air balloons floating hundreds of feet above the ground. A fighter jet soaring through the sky. A rock concert in Rio. And, of course, a paraglider dressed up as Batman, complete with Batmobile. These are just some of the videos that you can dive into with Kolor’s 360° video player Kolor Eyes, now featured on the Leap Motion Developer Gallery.
// Alex Colgan
Tomorrow in Montreal, audience members at the IX Symposium will see one of Jupiter’s moons appear inside a 60-foot dome. But this isn’t something you can find in a telescope – it’s a trippy virtual environment with stark geometric shapes and classical forms.
One of the most powerful things about the Leap Motion platform is its ability to tie into just about any creative platform. That’s why we’ve just launched a Platform Integrations & Libraries showcase where you can discover the latest wrappers, plugins, and integrations.
Our first featured integration is Vuo, an extraordinarily flexible visual programming language for developers and designers. There are already 6 Vuo examples for on our Developer Gallery, which include Mac executables and project files – so you can download, import, and see how they all fit together. Recently, we caught up with Jaymie Strecker, one of the key developers on Team Vuo.
From building 3D scenes to designing object interactions, distance is an essential part of VR design that has to balance hardware needs and user instincts.
Vivid Vision thinks so, and they want it to help millions of people. Formerly known as Diplopia, they believe that VR can help treat common vision problems like lazy eye and cross-eye, which happen when the brain ignores input from the weaker eye. Their solution – a VR experience that combines medical research with gameplay mechanics – is now rolling out to eye clinics around the USA.
From drinking your morning coffee to turning off the lamp, you use your hands thousands of times a day. It’s easy to take for granted – until your hands don’t cooperate. To help people rehabilitate from strokes and hand tremors, doctors and researchers are doing some really amazing things with off-the-shelf hardware.
In a recent presentation for the Society for Neuroscience Conference, three researchers from UCSF stacked the Leap Motion Controller against two different data gloves to help assess people who suffered from stroke. They believe that the Leap Motion Controller could play a key role in how doctors diagnose and treat a variety of brain disorders – even during live surgery.
Earlier today, indie studio HE SAW launched the full version of Blue Estate, the darkly funny rail shooter based on the critically acclaimed comics series. Featuring hours of new gameplay, new enemies, and the most ridiculous mob bosses you’ve ever seen, the game is now available on PC for the Leap Motion Controller on our App Store.
What if you could disassemble a robot at a touch? Motion control opens up exciting possibilities for manipulating 3D designs, with VR adding a whole new dimension to the mix. Recently, Battleship VR and Robot Chess developer Nathan Beattie showcased a small CAD experiment at the Avalon Airshow. Supported by the School of Engineering, Deakin University, the demo lets users take apart a small spherical robot created by engineering student Daniel Howard.
Nathan has since open sourced the project, although the laboratory environment is only available in the executable demo for licensing reasons. Check out the source code at github.com/Zaeran/CAD-Demo.
Over the next several weeks, we’re spotlighting the top 20 3D Jam experiences chosen by the jury and community votes. These spotlights will focus on game design, interaction design, and the big ideas driving our community forward.
From the creator of LICHT little adventure, Press Bird to Play made a big impression thanks to its evocative atmosphere and engaging mini-games, landing in 10th place. In today’s spotlight, creator Gerald Terveen talks about his old-school gaming inspirations, and upcoming work on a new title called VR Adventure.