Leap Motion, the device built to bring touch-like gesture controls -without a touch screen- will enter into its beta phase soon. Before that, the company has posted a video to show what its vision for Leap Motion on Windows 8: watch the video above. The demonstration shows “real-world” use cases, including web browsing, zooming in and out test, navigating apps, movies and photos.
Like a TV ad, it may not represent a 100% real-world interaction, but the preview looks great, and it’s even hard to believe that such a little box can bring so much gesture control. The beta phase isn’t really “news” since Leap Motion talked about it, and demonstrated its latest capabilities at Google I/O last week. Back then, it was controlling Google Earth (a demo similar to this one), so the scope was a little more limited and Windows 8 may resonate with even more people.
Given that it is touch-less, Leap Motion tends to react with a slight lag when compared to touch, but it allows motions that would not be possible on a touch screen. For example, it’s possible to put your hand on top of the sensor and tilt it slightly – Leap Motion can detect that. Leap Motion says that the device is capable of detecting sub-millimeter motions, so that’s surprisingly accurate.
Now, it remains to be seen if Leap Motion can attract the masses to their product, but the idea of benefiting from gesture controls without upgrading your screen is quite compelling since people don’t tend to upgrade their display to obtain that particular form of interaction. The price of the USB Leap Motion device is $79.99 and it should be available around July 22.