Video Documentation: Prototyping Object Selection from Jones Merc on Vimeo.
Yesterday the thought to use only one Leap Motion came up in a discussion. There are some advantages but also some downsides linked to such a setup.
A plus could be seen in the fact, that the technological mess behind three leaps (three computers, sending sound and text commands back and forth via shiftr between those computers) would definitely decrease. Another big advantage is, that I would have the possibility to display simple visual feedback to the user about the state and the tracking of his hand. This could help communicating that even slight finger movements are tracked and not only big arm movements.
(With three Leaps and three computers – of which only one is attached to a beamer — it would be practically impossible to display the finger movement in realtime, because all the tracking information would have to be sent to the «beamer-computer» and interpreted there. If I only had one leap, I could display the visual feedback all the time.
One big disadvantage would be that one is only able to control one object at a time. Before manipulating the light of the lamp the lamp has to be «selected» somehow. While discussing this matter, the best solution to select an object seemed to be to point at the object. This pointing/selecting would only be possible at a certain height. The hand has to have enough distance from the Leap device. Lowering the hand will «dive into» this object and allow to control only that one.
Unfortunately some gestures could be at the borderline to the selection area: when changing the volume of a song the z-axis position of the hand represents the volume. But if one turns up the volume very much, suddenly the hand will enter the «object selection heigth» and automatically switch the object.
This behaviour can be very well seen in the second part of the video above.
Otherwise the video proves that an object selection could be doable. By moving the hand into the object’s direction the object is selected.
In a further elaboration of this new idea, one could imagine that selection an object would map a projected border around the object (See image below).
(Berg London, 2012, https://vimeo.com/23983874)
[…] a setup where object selection has to take place (with only one leap motion) (see Prototyping Object Selection) it would also be imaginable that only the chat of the currently active object is […]