Whenever I see something like this, I immediately think of gorilla arm syndrome. There's a reason I was saying they will never become widespread when all my friends were screaming about Minority Report-style interfaces (ever since Minority Report).
You are implying hand waving all around with such use case.
I, for instance, imagine it as replacement for trackpad - I type happily on my keyboard, and I just do some slight gestures for scrolling, switching, closing, minimizing and pointing. And all while keeping my hands close to home row. It's even in similar form factor as trackpads!
I don't know why everyone thinks it will be like signaling on an airport or doing any strenous activity at all.
It's a very delicate device for very delicate input.
And that's all not counting cases where wide space hand usage would be extremely useful (3D modelling, directing a virtual orchestra, interfacing with kiosks...)
No. Trackpad device may be close to keyboard, but Leap is covering your entire working space. I.e. keyboard actually may be completely unplugged and Leap could detect what are you typing.
The fact that a trackpad is closer is one of it's failings. I disable the trackpad on my laptop unless I'm in a space that I can't use a mouse, due primarily to the fact that the trackpad has a bad habit of getting touched or bumped by my hands as I type. If I could shift my hands forward past my keys to gesture up or down to scroll I believe the issue would be negated.
I'd love to see a laptop with one of the leap devices embedded just along to top edge of the keyboard as an alternative to the trackpad.
"Gorilla arm" was a term originally tied to touch screens that the user had to reach out and touch a screen in front of them. If the Leap can detect small motions of your hands as they lay on the desk, then using one would look nothing like a "minority report" interface, and avoid gorilla arm.
You still have to consider the muscle strain involved in the round trip from your eyes to your fingers.
When typing, you don't really wait for the text to show up on screen before going on to the next letter, and chances are you're hitting backspace before you recognize the letters because you already know you screwed up.
With this interface, you'll have no such luck. You'll type slower, have more errors, and also have muscle strain from not having a more immediate response.
Comments
Whenever I see something like this, I immediately think of gorilla arm syndrome. There's a reason I was saying they will never become widespread when all my friends were screaming about Minority Report-style interfaces (ever since Minority Report).
You are implying hand waving all around with such use case.
I, for instance, imagine it as replacement for trackpad - I type happily on my keyboard, and I just do some slight gestures for scrolling, switching, closing, minimizing and pointing. And all while keeping my hands close to home row. It's even in similar form factor as trackpads!
I don't know why everyone thinks it will be like signaling on an airport or doing any strenous activity at all.
It's a very delicate device for very delicate input.
And that's all not counting cases where wide space hand usage would be extremely useful (3D modelling, directing a virtual orchestra, interfacing with kiosks...)
Why is it more difficult to do those gestures on the trackpad? The trackpad is closer to your keyboard and it is very quick to switch between the two.
No. Trackpad device may be close to keyboard, but Leap is covering your entire working space. I.e. keyboard actually may be completely unplugged and Leap could detect what are you typing.
The fact that a trackpad is closer is one of it's failings. I disable the trackpad on my laptop unless I'm in a space that I can't use a mouse, due primarily to the fact that the trackpad has a bad habit of getting touched or bumped by my hands as I type. If I could shift my hands forward past my keys to gesture up or down to scroll I believe the issue would be negated.
I'd love to see a laptop with one of the leap devices embedded just along to top edge of the keyboard as an alternative to the trackpad.
"Gorilla arm" was a term originally tied to touch screens that the user had to reach out and touch a screen in front of them. If the Leap can detect small motions of your hands as they lay on the desk, then using one would look nothing like a "minority report" interface, and avoid gorilla arm.
You still have to consider the muscle strain involved in the round trip from your eyes to your fingers.
When typing, you don't really wait for the text to show up on screen before going on to the next letter, and chances are you're hitting backspace before you recognize the letters because you already know you screwed up.
With this interface, you'll have no such luck. You'll type slower, have more errors, and also have muscle strain from not having a more immediate response.
I agree with you. However, there might be a niche for rare tasks with very intuitive usability. So far, a solution looking for killer app.
I agree, I think the Kinect is very good for what it's used. I can also see 3D modeling/manipulation benefitting greatly from such an interface.