Head Tracking with the Leap Motion

[zalo]

[youtube-hd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFcFz06wuTM[/youtube-hd]
Best Viewed in HD so you can see the Camera Frustum.

Just stick a stick on your head and you're in the game!

This is designed to detect any preternaturally long, straight, and pointy objects (not fingers) and use them to determine position and orientation for a camera. Since the leap can distinguish between pencils and fingers, you theoretically can use both simultaneously!

Latency and Accuracy are both pretty good, but reliability and range are terrible. That's partially due to the hacky way I put this together, and partially due to the low-range of the Rev 04 leap sensor I'm currently using. Notice, I'm also projecting the position of the camera to the back of the pencil, so even though the tip is moving in an arc, the camera is merely rotating.

If any of you have Leaps (Palmer and Gerald probably do) you can try out this demo app here.

[cybereality]

Interesting, but I can't really see how this would be used when playing a game.

I mean, are you supposed to duct tape a pencil to your head or something?

[zalo]

Pretty much, but a more evolved system would have the leap mounted above the players head facing down. Of course, the pencil is mounted to the HMD, not just the head.

If they ever let me use 3D blob tracking, that would be nice too.