LEAP MOTION CONTROLLER

LEAP MOTION CONTROLLER

Long anticipated due to its low cost ($80), unobtrusive sardine-can size, and purported accuracy and 

ease of use as demonstrated in some impressive videos, I was pretty excited to try out the device, 

which was released today. Gestural interfaces like the Leap Motion controller and Microsoft’s Kinect 

have generated a lot of buzz over the past few years, and hopes are high that they’ll eventually 

become as common as the mouse and keyboard, if not supplanting them.

And while it hasn’t been long since I leapt into using the Leap (I had only a few days to try it out), I’m 

sad to report that, so far, it has fallen flat.

It was easy to set the device up—you plug the sleek-looking Leap Motion controller into one of your 

computer’s USB ports, and download the software for your operating system from the Leap Motion 

site.

As the company notes, most of Leap Motion’s innovation is on the software side, not the hardware 

side: the device houses infrared LEDs and two cameras underneath its black glass top (see “Leaping 

Into the Gesture-Control Era”); the software tracks the movement of your fingers as you move them 

above the sensor.


The main way most people will use the Leap Motion controller will be through Airspace, which is a 

desktop app downloaded as part of the initial setup. Airspace includes a link to the Airspace Store, 

where you can get Leap Motion-enabled apps (some are free, while others cost 99 cents and up). At 

launch, there will be over 75 apps in the store, Leap executives told me, and when I was trying the 

device out, they included some well-known games like Fruit Ninja and Cut the Rope, as well as the 

drumming app AirBeats and skull-dissection app called Cyber Science—Motion.

I set it up on both a Mac and a PC, and downloaded and tested a variety of apps for both, including the 

aforementioned ones, a Corel drawing app, several more games, and a utility for controlling my 

computer. There were some bright spots, but mostly I was frustrated; I didn’t see on-screen what I 

thought should be taking place as I moved my hands.


Generally, though, it felt like I could never quite get the controls to work as deliberately as I wanted. 

With the AirBeats app, for instance, I tried moving my hand in a consistent pattern to hit the on-

screen bass drum, but it wouldn’t play a consistent beat. And with Painter Freestyle, I had a hell of a 

time controlling the position of the virtual brush, switching between brush types, or changing colors. I 

didn’t have much luck using it to control a Word document or my Web browser, either.

It was irritating to keep trying to select or manipulate items on the screen without getting it right. I 

tried calibrating the Leap Motion controller, and switching from one operating system to another, but 

neither worked that impressively. I also tried different lighting settings, including a room with hardly 

any outside light, yet that didn’t make things much better.

Even if it worked perfectly, I’m not sure how useful it would be to the average person. I could see it 

enhancing certain computer-aided tasks, like drawing, modeling, and virtual dissections, as well as 

making it easier to surf the Web. Yet I’m not convinced it would make these activities that much 

easier or better than performing them with existing tools.

I also noticed something that doesn’t usually happen when using a mouse and keyboard, even though 

I’m routinely in front of a computer for seven or more hours a day: after an hour or so, my right arm 

felt really tired, all the way up to my shoulder. Even when I started fresh the next day, making 

motions as small and precise as I could, it still started to bug me after a while.