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Today we held a live Ustream with our co-founders, Michael and David. Hundreds of our community members attended, but many more could not make it. Below the break is a full (lengthy) transcript of the 30-minute conversation.

For quick reference, a summary of the questions David and Michael answered:

1. You have 600,000 devices sitting around. Are you dumping these or is this a software issue?

2. How about giving people an option? Magic = wait until July, non-magic = send it sooner.

3. How do I become a beta tester?

4. How much does HP or ASUS affect this decision? 

5. How will you address market traction loss from this delay, Kinect 2 and others that are coming soon?

6. You’ve already changed your dates before, how do you know you won’t delay again?

7. I still want to see an official video showing off Windows 8 support.

8. Why won’t you let developers purchase a device now and access the SDK?

9. But even a long beta test won’t bring you a 100% product. Just release it for Kickstarter and skip the stores and the public.  (note, we are not a Kickstarter)

10. What will happen next year after you go in to HP? Will you go into mobile next?

11. Do you have a date for releasing the beta test for developers? More details please.

12. Can you please allow access to cloud points in SDK?

13. Would it be better to order from Amazon UK or Leap directly?

14. As a customer not a developer, how can I be part of the beta testing? You said a small number of people would be able to. 

15. How many apps do you predict will be available at the time of the new launch date?

16. Are you planning on building a bluetooth device at a later date?

17. Will it work with a multiple monitor setup? 

18. How are you going to reward early pre-order customers?

19. Is the delay coming from pressure from HP or other partners? 

20. Why did you wait so long to tell us about the delay?

21. How does this impact the big deals with Best Buy and HP? 

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I wanted to reach out to update you on the status of our ship date. After a lot of consideration, we’ve decided to push back the date and will now be shipping units to pre-order customers on July 22nd.

This is not a decision we take lightly. There are hundreds of thousands of people in over 150 countries who have pre-ordered Leap Motion controllers, some as long as a year ago. These people are part of our community and there is nothing more important to us than getting them devices as quickly as possible.

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Hello,

It’s been an incredible week at Leap Motion and around the world. We’ve leaped into Google Earth, watched the NASA Space Apps Challenge unfold, and released brand new Unity examples with the latest SDK. Airspace submissions remain open, while applications to the developer program are closed. We have some more UI elements and sample code in our community toolkit, plus stunning new trailers showcasing the latest apps from your fellow developers.

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Hello,

Our big story this week is Leap Motion’s collaboration with HP, which opens new possibilities and new audiences for all Leap developers. We also have details about the latest SDK update, a handy guide to promoting your app with a short video, and more code samples from the community toolkit.

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Game designers around the world have been inspired by the Leap Motion Controller’s incredible speed and accuracy to create games that take advantage of our unique 3D interaction technology. Last week, we caught up with Patrick Hackett – a game designer with popular indie developer Double Fine Productions – about his creative process in developing for the Leap Motion Controller.

Double Fine is widely known for creating quirky, innovative games that capture the public imagination. Their debut app for Leap Motion is the score challenge game Dropchord, which allows you to become a master DJ – dodging scratches, collecting notes, and jamming to an original electronic soundtrack. During our visit to Double Fine’s offices in San Francisco, we were invited behind the scenes to meet some of the amazing people who brought Dropchord to life.

When did you first experience Leap Motion, and what was your initial reaction?

Leap Motion first sent us some controllers in February and I think our initial reaction was the same as everyone who uses it. We were blown away by Leap Motion’s responsiveness and sensitivity. Jeremy Mitchell, one of my colleagues, had it set up at his desk initially and we were fighting over who got to use it next. Both of us ended up taking controllers home and creating demos over the weekend because we were so geeked up to use it.

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What do you want people to feel when they’re playing Dropchord?

Dropchord was built with the hope that players feel like they’re playing a game inside a music visualizer. While it’s a smaller experience compared to larger music games like Rock Band or Dance Central, the original music and availability on Leap Motion gives it a great new feel.

How did you pick the music for the game?

The original prototype for Dropchordwas created with the Deadmau5 track “Some Chords.” We used that as reference for the type of music we wanted throughout the game, trusting that some of our friends (who we contracted the music out to) would deliver the same style.

In my opinion, they couldn’t have done it better. They understood what we were trying to achieve and created some truly incredible tracks. Tracks that, even after listening to them hundreds of times as this point, still get my head bobbing.

What types of music might we see in future versions of Dropchord?

We’re definitely open to the idea of future versions containing different types of music. In fact, we had some Lady Gaga in the original prototype at one point and it worked pretty well!

What Leap Motion game do you want to make next?

I’d really like to make a Leap Motion game that’s more gesture-based. Dropchordis an excellent showcase of the precision, but I’d love to make a game that’s more about the movement of your hands and fingers instead of the positions.

Patrick Hackett, @playmorevgames, is a Senior Gameplay Programmer with Double Fine Productions

Hello,

It can be easy to dismiss menus and settings as unimportant, but these brief interludes before the “real software” begins are an essential part of the user experience. In this week’s newsletter, as part of our ongoing forum series on app design, we look at best practices for implementing menus and settings.

In other news, Leap Motion developers around the world are joining a 48-hour hackathon headed by NASA. Will you be among them? Also, we have sample code from the forums, an exploding spaceship, and Bosch at Stanford’s Robot Block Party.

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At Leap Motion, we’ve been amazed by how many people from around the world have been inspired by the possibilities of our technology. They want to free themselves, and the rest of us, from the current limitations of computing interfaces. Last week, we joined many of these visionaries at the annual SF MusicTech Summit, which brings together some of the biggest names in the music, business, and tech scene together under one roof.

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An electric energy filled the air at Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco as my friends and co-workers, Isaac Cohen and Justin Schunick, joined me at the Summit. In different ways, Isaac and Justin have both been experimenting with expressive new ways to create and experience music. They were at the Summit to talk about their latest creations and demonstrate Leap Motion’s technology for an enthusiastic crowd of fellow music innovators.

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When Justin’s not holding a soldering iron, working on the inner workings of the Leap Motion Controller’s hardware, he’s experimenting with a new way of interacting with Ableton Live, a standard MIDI interface, and GeCo – a new Leap Motion app developed by Geert Bevin.

With a standard MIDI interface, sounds can be created, distorted, bent, shifted and altered in a multitude of options through individual knobs and controls – but it’s a cumbersome process. Justin wants to change all that. GeCo lets you translate subtle movements of the hands into various audio channels. Justin demonstrated how he can use Leap Motion to control up to 18 different audio channels simultaneously through the natural movements of his hands – breaking down the barriers between him and the creative act of making music.

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Isaac, also known as Cabbibo when he’s creating jaw-dropping 3D visuals and soundscapes, demonstrated his explorations into the possibilities of navigating a live audio/visual 3D space. He’s created Universe of Sound, a “3D space exploration music blog” that links sound and visuals for a transcendent journey through the stars.

Isaac and Justin freestyled the presentation, demoing concept after concept. Justin revealed how, with a few small tweaks to Ableton, he could turn the Leap Motion Controller into a virtual turntable – complete with vinyl scratching. Isaac combined two devices on the fly to showcase how his 3D interactive visuals could be combined with Justin’s Ableton software to create an interactive sound and video visualizer.

The session ended with a flood of questions, as well as many invaluable suggestions. We weren’t there to showcase our work, but to stimulate new ideas and allow other talented people to continue pushing this new wave of humanized technology. The barriers between people and technology are forever blurring, and we’re excited to be a part of that movement.

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We’d like to hear what you think about how music creation can be transformed through a more natural human interface. What will the future sound like? How will digital music be created, manipulated, and experienced in 5, 10, 50 years? Post your thoughts below.

Hello,

Creating software for the Leap Motion Controller presents a unique challenge: how do you develop for 3D interactive technology that the world has never seen before? In this week’s newsletter, we look at a series of posts that showcase the latest innovations in app design.

We also have details about the Linux SDK update, the story of NASA’s Leap Motion demo at GDC, and some unbelievable opportunities for developer collaboration. You’ll also want to check out the Unity UI elements and sample code recently shared by theLIFT team.

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“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” – Mark van Doren

In this post, we’re taking a look at different approaches for introducing Orientations and Tutorials into Leap Motion apps.

With the introduction of the Leap Motion Controller, we’re unlocking a more natural and intuitive way for people to interact with computers. It’s completely new and downright mind-blowing — the first time ever that users have the power to control an experience with nuanced hand and finger movements in three dimensional space.

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With Airspace now open for submissions and launch just around the corner, we want to take the opportunity to share thinking and great examples from throughout the developer community in order to bring our existing User Experience Guidelines to life. We’re seeing some incredible content being developed and want to spread the wealth – so over the next few weeks we’ll be sharing thoughts, screenshots, videos and even example code. This can hopefully inspire some good conversation – as well as development of your own software.

For our first post, we want to take a step back and talk about Building Complete Application Experiences.

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