Leap Motion attracted a great deal of attention when it announced the prototype of a new augmented reality (AR) headset which offered an increased field of vision beyond what currently available hardware such as the Microsoft HoloLens can currently offer.
The headset was called Project North Star, and the company has now announced a new demo that shows off some of the capabilities of the headset prototype and what would be possible for its commercial use.
Leap Motion previously released the schematics for the reference design of Project North Star, along with a short guide on how to build a North Star headset, giving creators and businesses the opportunity to create their own version of the headset.
The new demo uses Table Tennis to show how the Project North Star hardware can work with Leap Motion hand tracking combined with a handheld paddle controller. By using the paddle, users can cause the virtual ball to bounce across the table, with an AI opponent to act as a challenge to the user.
The AR Table Tennis demo is designed to show how the AR headset can be used to train skills in a way that can be transferred into real life. The team at Leap Motion hope that Project North Star can be used as part of a system to optimise a task or behaviour.
The Table Tennis demo uses physics simulations to keep the AR experience accurate to the real world, so any hand-eye coordination and muscle memory built up using the simulation can be transferred into the real world.
Leap Motion said as part of its press release: “The realism and physical reproducibility of this demo were built with the intent that the user should grow in their understanding of the system by interacting with it. As a medium, AR has the potential to improve how we learn about and interact with the real world. Simulations like this have the unique ability to adjust their difficulty downward to accommodate novices and upward to challenge experts in a whole new way – appealing to players at all skill levels.”
Further information can be found on the Leap Motion blog, along with YouTube videos of the demo. Further news on Leap Motion will be covered here on VRFocus.