Video: Virtually Driving With Leap Motion And Street View

April 25, 2013 by Dave Haynes

My enthusiasm for most gesture stuff is really limited, but the notable exception is with the Leap Motion technology that has now been with developers for several months and will shortly be available on the consumer market.

People should be able to buy the little gesture-sensing sticks in late May (make that July), for $80, at least in the U.S. (getting me one to fiddle with).

What’s different from Kinect is the granular level of control when users are right in front of a screen. It is sufficiently tight and responsive to remove the need for things like touch overlays (at least in some applications). It also helps that gestures don’t have to be learned to interact. It appears largely intuitive.

Here, via TechCrunch, is a great lab demo on how this tech has been integrated with Google Earth and Street View. Imagine what a vacation travel agency or auto retailer might do with this sort of thing, as in test drive a BMW on the Pacific Coast Highway or one of those no restrictions stretches of the Autobahn.

This demo shows tech developed by the Toronto (yay) interactive agency Teehan+Lax to animate Google StreetView.

It’s eye candy that actually has a pile of real world application. If your schtick in digital signage involves interactive, you really should be tinkering with Leap Motion by now.

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