Video: Leap Motion Shows Interactive Digital Possibilities At SXSW

March 14, 2013 by Dave Haynes

The Leap Motion controller has, I think, a huge amount of potential for interactive experiences in retail and other settings because of the granularity of gesture recognition (it can track the end of a waving chopstick) and the the absence of any need to “learn” gestures.

The opportunity for desktop gaming is very large, so that’s where a lot of the early development has gone. You see a lot of stuff that is “cool” or “fun” but not a lot that makes doing something easier or better – which is where I think this should go as a marketing tool.

This Engadget video shot in the Leap Motion demo room at SXSW in Austin shows some fun, cool stuff, but if you stick with it you also see a photo gallery thing that can be navigated with waves and finger pokes. That’s where you could start to see things happen for product catalogs and virtual showrooms.

If you can add a controller for $80 retail and remove the need for expensive touch screen overlays and fiddly device drivers, that’s going to be interesting for some interactive retail and brand folks.

This is like Kinect, but the key difference this is in tight with displays and the gesture recognition much finer and better. Kinect, from what I have seen so far, doesn’t make a lot of sense for interactive digital. Leap Motion, at least so far, seems to.