Paul Marks, chief technology correspondent
(Image: Leap Motion)
The Next Big Thing now has the next big app store. The Leap, the forthcoming 3D gestural control device that could by all accounts replace the mouse, the joystick and even the keyboard, will launch on 13 May alongside a fully stocked app store called Airspace.
The $80 gadget's maker, Leap Motion of San Francisco, numbers at least two senior Apple executives among its staff - Steve Jobs's former mobile ad expert Andy Miller and interactive marketeer Michael Zagorsek - so it is perhaps little surprise that the app store model has been harnessed by the ambitious start-up.
Yesterday, Leap announced that the apps on offer will range from serious high-fidelity gesture-based 3D design tools from AutoCAD author Autodesk, via a weather channel app offering Minority Report-style map movements, to drawing packages and games galore - from speedway racing to a hand-wavy version of mobile hit Cut The Rope.
Quite how the Leap manages its extraordinary resolution - it can track a 10-micrometre movement of your fingers at rates of up to 290 times per second - is still wrapped up in patents and a heavy dose of the company's own secret sauce. But with Leap - and Microsoft's lower-resolution Kinect system before it - having demonstrated the potential in this (volumetric) space, other firms not known for 3D work are now waking up to the possibilities.
For instance, the invention-licensing firm Intellectual Ventures of Bellevue, Washington, has recently filed US patents on processing 3D gestures and a TV with built-in gesture control. Let's? hope the 3D gesture-control space does not end up a minefield of patent litigation like the smartphone arena.
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