/speechless

 

Interested I am.  On dates, decide you must.

From someone who develops technology for a living, this is going to be a huge mess that I'd be Apple will win because they will out litigate the smaller, less financially powerful Rift unless there was some clever public disclosures done by Rift.

What I would be afraid of is that the Rift goes public, sells 100 millions dollars and Apple says, "Nice work but we own that patent, you're infringing, and you owe us damages."  This will essentially destroy Rift, unless they enter into licensing, which will require them to admit they're in violation of patent and just send Apple a check for each headset sold.

The legal mess will certainly cloud the issue and investors HATE, HATE, HATE uncertainty like this because they start asking, "Are we ever going to see our money back or is Apple going to get the first cut because of the IP issues?"  That's when they bail out.

And it's no longer a question if Apple is in the field.  You don't file if you're not interested at least from a licencing point of view and sadly for Rift, if they're in it, they'll win it.

Since we are dormant, I have been casually leveling a Bounty Hunter and having a blast just enjoying Star Wars again.

The space fights are fun too.

What you mean "we" paleface?

Some of us never go dormant.

On a side note, space combat is sorta fun and a good beer drinking space combat romp.

On another side note Strod.. I'm also leveling a Hunter (my last class story ever).  Good times.

The proposed plan is to only deliver packages that weigh under 5 lbs and only deliver to a 10-mile radius of take-off point.

Yes we've all read the article.  My comments still stand.  As much as I'd like to jump up and down and proclaim this as the best thing ever, the tech just isn't there yet to make this a cost effective solution for this application.

There are however, many other VERY cost effective solutions that domestic UAVs can provide but that is for another discussion.

I'm sticking with the PC and the 360 until the Rift comes closer to market and then I'll re-evaluate based on what looks promising.

http://i-hls.com/2013/09/hebrew-can-you-crack-gchqs-cyber-code/#!

This screams of FA.  Get to work  one of you ultra clever people.

From the comments I've seen, a lot of their points are well founded.

1. Doesn't track fingers when put together or when rest of the hand blocks it.
2. Resource hog.
3. Subject to lighting conditions
4. Arms and heads make it bug out.
5. More cumbersome and tiresome to use than keyboard and mouse.
6. Software has been disappointing.

In relation to VR, it's unusable. I could see it being built into laptops to allow a touch-less touch screen, but why not just make it a touch screen at that point? A majority of people don't want to have to build up their forearm strength just to browse around on a computer.

In the end I think this will get replaced with something like the Kinect, where the hand doesn't have to hover in a specific place.

So basically you believe what you read by people that used it for a few minutes and wrote BS / made a BS video and not the opinion of someone that uses it everyday.  Check.

Let me respond to your comments.

1.  Software issue.  There are plenty of points on your hand to track if you use the real dev version of the software.  Again, the device is AMAZING.  The software, so far is meh.  But good enough for over 1 million downloads in under 2 weeks.  Nice start but there's room to get better.

2.  Resource hog?  On what?  Do you have a 286 PC with 64K of ram?  I know what laptop you use, I have a very similar one (maybe with a little more RAM) but basically the same and I can assure you this just isn't the case.  Whomever claims this is just a novice computer user with a junk system.

3.  Lighting conditions are NOT an issue unless you plan to use it in total darkness or on a broadway stage.  My mancave has a variety of lighting from very low to pretty bright and unless you're working under a spotlight (which will break up the sensor loop) this is not an issue.

4.  Yes, if you put something into it's field it will track it.  Again, the software isn't mature enough to discard stray inputs.  This isn't a LEAP problem, this is, again, a software problem.  Right now you have to understand how the unit works and use it properly.  So yes, if you use it wrong you won't get good results until the software is mature enough to become more idiot proof.

5.  This is true because you've been using a keyboard and mouse for 20+ years.  If you expect to be amazing at controlling something like this after a 20 minute unpacking and test that you're doing for a lame YouTube video then yes, you'll be disappointed.  A-la the scrubs in that video you linked.

6.  Yes.  Totally agree here.  Again, the software that uses the LEAP is way behind the technically excellent product that Leap brought to market.  You can (and I did) argue that Leap should have released dev kits early on (like the rift did) so that when launch time came there would be better interfaces for the product.  If they did this, idiots like the ones in the video, and people writing shallow moronic reviews who don't understand the product wouldn't have anything to say.

7.  If you think it's not usable for VR, I'm sorry but you're dead wrong. 

Current response time for my unit is measured in single digit milli-seconds at upwards of 100 FPS.  From running the software just now I'm getting 115 fps with a 3-4 ms response. 

The conception is already there where you would have two leap fields that exist orthogonal to each other to track everything around a person.  I could explain but I doubt anyone cares and you seem  too fixed on what some idiots said than thinking for yourself or listening to someone that actually uses the product.

Touchscreens are 2D.  The Leap is 3D.  This is new.  This is challenging.  I understand why.  I wish Leap understood their market better and did more work to make their own software or allowed dev kits to be used sooner by more people.  They didn't.

Yes I understand people are in general lazy and don't want to move to do things on a computer.  Point taken.

Also, this product is FAR, FAR superior to Kinect.  Like BMW to horse and buggy superior.  You can't even really compare the two until the Kinect for PC comes out with an updated unit which promises far better performance.

Your response here is disappointing.  I expected more from you.