Could someone help me understand where Orion truly is?

Tags: #<Tag:0x007fe274a2f810>

YungYoungstr 2018-07-17 06:06:38 UTC #1

Hello. I recently got my hands on a leap motion, and though it's a wonderful piece of kit, I'm a little confused. I have two questions

1.I saw an incredible demo of an earlier version of Orion, linked here:

I see this and I'm blown away by the potential this device has, but unfortunately in my own testing my results are nowhere near this level. In fact, my experience with the Leap Motion closely resembles the video on the left, even here in mid 2018. I realize that he had optimal conditions with very dark lighting, but even when I try to recreate those conditions, the results are eons away from his. Even if he had some secret factor I was missing, I doubt that alone would make the difference as drastic as it is.

So my first question is this: am I missing something? Or is that video just an unreachable fantasy? I set up the Leap Motion fine, installed and reinstalled the drivers and all the software, and fought with the pain-inducing calibration and just BARELY scraped out an 87. According to Leap, an 80 is passing and a 90 is optimal; are my 3 little points honestly making that much of a difference? I seriously don't see what I'm missing here. The occlusion coverage falls apart for anything more than a simple fist, its not as smooth, it goes wonky more often than i'd like, and it's overall a far inferior experience.I know this little box isn't magic, and I should design my game around it's limitations, but when I see others get so much better results I have to stop and wonder what I'm not getting.

2.I should mention though, that the video shown is using VR, and I'm using desktop Leap Motion. At this point I feel like the only person left on the planet using Leap Motion for desktop. All of your flagship software is VR, you post almost exclusively on AR/VR nowadays, and when I setup Desktop I was told that Orion works best with an HMD.

And that brings me to my second point: is the problem that I'm using desktop? Exactly how much better is Leap Motion head mounted than it is desktop? I really don't want to switch over, but if the difference is that substantial, I'll probably just bite the bullet. And I want to be clear that my point of this post isn't to bash Leap Motion. You guys have done some incredible work. I'm just hoping that someone could point me where I need to go so I can get this at a level I'm happy with. Thank you.

AlexColgan 2018-07-17 17:34:13 UTC #2

Thanks for this post, it's a thoughtful and well-considered one. VR tracking is substantially better than desktop at this point.

HOTTHANDS 2018-07-17 21:09:37 UTC #3

Hi Yung -

First - Take heart! You are not alone in your desire to be free of wearing devices strapped to your head!

We are working in various forms of XR without the use of the visor. We have used LEAP Motion hand tracking and Unity3D in our solution. We have a fixed mount because Unity3D doesn't care how the hands are tracked... they are objects rendered in the scene. And so we have found LEAP Motion's Bottom up or Facing selection a plus as convenient choices in our development. We hope that LEAP Motion developers keep the option because this convenience is a major reason for us to use their device,

Second - Please note that LEAP Motion reads images from a particular frequency that it emits, but it sees in the infrared or "heat" range. While Orion 4 has greatly reduced some object glare and sensitivity to background IR, it is possible that you may be experiencing some bounce that confuses the sensors. It really does perform as shown in the video.

We also failed to comprehend why the calibration needed to be so violent and decided that if the device needed to be calibrated at all or more than once, we would simply use another technology. Many competitive technologies are now available. Fortunately, any glitches seem to reset with reinstall and calibration has not been necessary.

Our workaround has been: (1) Use IR non-glare surfaces if using face-based view (2) Avoid overhead direct lighting if placing it on a table (3) assure that glare or heat from the computer is displaced form the working area of the camera (4) Only use one LEAP Motion in the vicinity to reduce unexpected IR sources (5) Never demonstrate with the IR display showing body parts other than the hands. IR images tend to show bodies and not clothing... (6) We are using Intel7 chips and NVDIA Graphics cards as well as 64bit machine and USB 3.0 - This device needs power and a wide open processing pipe if you want to use it in development. Once your executable is running, you can easily use the stated specs. (7) We reinstall all LEAP software after Windows update, LEAP update or Unity3D update. (8) Smile more! It is getting more stable all the time and it is just a Beta!