Leap Motion Turns Your Hands Into VR Controllers With Orion

This is no doubt the year that virtual reality becomes a real thing. We've got three different headsets slated to come out, which will finally give us the ability to immerse ourselves in other virtual worlds. But headsets are only one part of what we need to be able to truly experience virtual reality. We still need to be able to interact with the environment around us.

Both the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive have solutions in place for this. I've personally had the chance to use the Touch controllers that will be released for the Rift. Overall, it felt pretty natural for the most part, but you still have to physically hold onto the controllers, which limits what you can do with your hands. But the people at Leap Motion think that they have the solution.

If you don't remember, Leap Motion made a device a while back that allows you to use your hands to control your computer. It was interesting, but perhaps ahead of its time. The company has been hard at work on a new project called Orion, that takes advantage of their existing motion-tracking device, and essentially turns your two hands into the only controllers you'll need.

The human hand is a versatile tool, and the amount of gestures and motions that you can make are seemingly limitless. So if you can find a way to remove the need for physical buttons, then you'll be taking one more step toward the virtual reality experience that we all look forward to.

If you take a look at the video that Leap Motion posted, you can see that they have a number of pre-programmed gestures that can be used to create and manipulate the blocks in their demo. If you happen to have a Leap Motion Controller already, you can download the beta preview, along with a demo of Blocks, which is what's used in the video.

Source: Leap Motion