Leap Motion is a company that has always been focused on human-computer interfaces.
The fundamental limit in technology is not its size or its cost or its speed, but how we interact with it. Click To TweetWe believe that the fundamental limit in technology is not its size or its cost or its speed, but how we interact with it. These interactions define what we create, how we learn, how we communicate with each other. It would be no stretch of the imagination to say that the way we interact with the world around us is perhaps the very fabric of the human experience.
We believe that this human experience is on the precipice of a great change.
The coming of virtual reality has signaled a great moment in the history of our civilization. We have found in ourselves the ability to break down the very substrate of reality and create ones anew, entirely of our own design and of our own imaginations.
As we explore this newfound ability, it becomes increasingly clear that this power will not be limited to some ‘virtual world’ separate from our own. It will spill out like a great flood, uniting what has been held apart for so long: our digital and physical realities.
In preparation for the coming flood, we at Leap Motion have built a ship, and we call it Project North Star.
North Star is a full augmented reality platform that allows us to chart and sail the waters of a new world, where the digital and physical substrates exist as a single fluid experience.
The first step of this endeavor was to create a system with the technical specifications of a pair of augmented glasses from the future. This meant our prototype had to far exceed the state of the art in resolution, field-of-view, and framerate.
North Star is a full augmented reality platform that allows us to chart and sail the waters of a new world, where the digital and physical substrates exist as a single fluid experience. Click To TweetBorrowing components from the next generation of VR systems, we created an AR headset with two low-persistence 1600×1440 displays pushing 120 frames per second with an expansive visual field over 100 degrees. Coupled with our world-class 180° hand tracking sensor, we realized that we had a system unlike anything anyone had seen before.
All of this was possible while keeping the design of the North Star headset fundamentally simple – under one hundred dollars to produce at scale. So although this is an experimental platform right now, we expect that the design itself will spawn further endeavors that will become available to the rest of the world.
To this end, next week we will make the hardware and related software open source. The discoveries from these early endeavors should be available and accessible to everyone.
We’ve got a long way to go still, so let’s go together.
We hope that these designs will inspire a new generation of experimental AR systems that will shift the conversation from what an AR system should look like, to what an AR experience should feel like.
Over the past month we’ve hinted at some of the characteristics of this platform, with videos on Twitter that have hit the front page of Reddit and collected millions of views from people around the world.
Over the next few weeks we will be releasing blog posts and videos charting our discoveries and reflections in the hope that this will create an evolving and escalating conversation around the nature of this new world we’re heading towards.
It's time to shift the conversation from what an AR system should look like, to what an AR experience should feel like. Click To TweetWe’re going to take a bit of time to talk about the hardware itself, but it’s important to understand that, at the end of the day, it’s the experience that matters most. This platform lets us forget the limitations of today’s systems; it lets us focus on the experience, the software and the interface, which is the core of what Leap Motion is about.
The journey towards the hardware of a perfect AR headset is not complete and will not be for some time, but Project North Star gives us perhaps the first glimpse that we’ve ever had. It helps us ask the right questions, find the right answers and start to chart the course to a future we all want to live in, where technology empowers humanity to solve the problems of today and those to come.
NEXT: Our Journey to the North Star
Update: The North Star headset is now open sourced! Learn more ›
awesome! when nobody was able to identify the headset used in the videos I grew quite curious. now this sounds super interesting and I can’t wait to learn more.
the headset render seems confusing given that I can’t really see how it fits on my face … and a bit of a timeline until we see something for consumers would be awesome too 🙂
Some folks that saw the demo seemed to think it was a Meta 2, but I didn’t see it in person.
Looking at the schematic, North Star uses the semi-silvered mirror approach. While it suffers a bit in bright light situations, it is unquestionably more cost effective with a better field of view than a waveguide (what the hololens uses).
I am curious how the Magic Leap fov turns out in reality (and not just based on the simulator), but they seem to be too expensive to create a market … so this has a fair shot at reaching the market sooner. Reminds me of the new Star Wars AR toy, but with proper input.
I would love to build something for it … but it needs a market first! Or at least a product announcement with details regarding price and launch date.
Looks like the perfect combination of strong hand tracking with low latency visual feedback. When can developers expect to get their hands on these?
Shut up and take my money!
This is fantastic. Combining the idea of “virtual wearables” with an inexpensive HMD is exactly what we were hoping to see. Robust hand tracking gives you context, meaning and interaction without all the complexities of full real-time real world scene recognition. Can’t wait to try it.
Also, kudos for waiting until you had something that was real and worked before talking about it… unlike a certain other similarly named company I could mention…
This is leadership. You pay attention to details without lose the sight towards the big picture. The passion and vision shown here on this article goes beyond the value of any single technology itself. You guys are feeling the same breeze felt by Christopher Columbus. The wind of change blowing in your face as ships advances in the sea and the new world becomes increasingly closer. Godspeed Leap Motion.
We might get a successful AR headset with ‘Leap’ in the name after all!
Absolutely incredible work, Leap. It was amazing to see those videos of you guys attaching UI’s to your hands, and now seeing the headset itself I’m super excited to get working on one!
thank you so much, you guys have shown so much openness and leadship. Just please register the design patent in China as well before your invention is stolen by some shameless people here, which they will try.
Incredible innovation, leaping ahead in one swift motion! Looking forward to the SDK so that we can create something amazing.
Please reach out to us when it’s available
http://www.imagine360.marketing
what a good news!| thank you
Leap Motion well done. I think you are taking a great approach, and i always loved the bare hand interaction instead of any other controller/gloves/etc…
Well done!! Looking forward to seeing this in action at some stage!!
Fantastic job. Congratulations, David!
Wow, congratulations… this is amazing! But… does this mean that it is a screen-through AR?
Be sure to read the technical deep dive: http://blog.leapmotion.com/our-journey-to-the-north-star/
Does that mean we can finally buy the 180° hand tracker as a standalone product? Desperately waiting for it to get my hands on it.
We don’t currently plan to release the 180-degree module as a separate module, though we do make it available to select partners (and OEMs for embedding).
This is disappointing sir.
Do you plan on releasing an SDK for developers to work with soon? Or a process that allows devs to apply for it?
I’d like to play a video games where strange things are just growing out of my arms. Could work very well for comedy (Warioware) or horror gags or quirky puzzle solving (Samorost)
See our prototype AR helmet on page 9 of the presentation http://thedigitalmarketingrevolution.blogspot.de/2017/06/digital-fitness-is-best-lowcost-strategy.html
If you close your hand, do you get a Fist of the North Star?
Yes, but then you realize that you’re already dead.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7e100e1ef49e6b1362690076860b7f31775e8f3c45516146a40eba1d36e56b08.gif
I would love to see this technology adopted for baseball. Tied in with existing pitch tracing technology, it might allow the home plate umpire to see an accurate strike zone projected into his field of vision. While major league umpires do an amazing job of calling balls and strikes, as pitches reach and surpass 100 MPH it becomes increasingly difficult. The latest statistics I’ve seen suggest an average error rate of 15%. This would give officials another tool to more accurately perform a challenging job.
Any updates on the release date of the source files?
This is exactly what the AR space needs right now. Get the tech into the hands of the people and see how it evolves.
Incredible technology. I’m looking forward to it becoming widely adopted
Project North Star sounds much smarter and mature than some of its predecessors (e.g. Ms Hololens). Look forward to hearing it’s official announcement release for purchase order (at least for the developer).
Awesome project, thanks Leapmotion. We have used Leapmotion for hand tracking for a couple of projects now and its really impressive. Northstar is a great start. Would love to explore how we can add additional sensors for depth and SLAM. Intel Realsense perhaps ? And since AR is relatively forgiving in terms of latency and resolution perhaps a mobile compute unit ? Exciting times ahead for sure !