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Leap Motion Raises $50 Million For Its Finger Tracking Technology

UploadVR Between Realities podcast

VR and AR headsets are heading to market from Microsoft, Google, Facebook and others that have a wide range of capabilities. Leap Motion is one possible solution, with its hand and finger tracking technology offering one route for VR and AR headsets to let people make selections and interact with virtual worlds. This potential likely figured into the $50 million Series C funding raised by Leap Motion.

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The XR Week Peek (2020.09.21): Quest 2 released, NVIDIA acquires ARM, Leap Motion 2 on sale, and much more!

The Ghost Howls

You can finally buy the Leap Motion v2 accessory. The time for us XR developers to buy a Leap Motion 2 has finally come. Leap Motion 1 has been used by almost every developer and researcher , both in VR and not.

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Qualcomm Signs “Multi-year” Deal to Bring Ultraleap Hand-tracking to XR2 Headsets

Road to VR

Qualcomm and Ultraleap today announced a “multi-year co-operation agreement” that will bring Ultraleap’s controllerless hand-tracking tech (formerly of Leap Motion) to XR headsets based on the Snapdragon XR2 chipset.

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Weekly Funding & People Roundup: Leap Motion Raises $50M,

AllThingsVR

Weekly Funding & People Roundup: Leap Motion Raises $50M, WaveOptics Raises £12M, Hutch Interiors Raises$10M, ObEN Raises $5M, nDreams Raises £2.7M, Mira Announces $99 AR Headset, Paramount Pictures Names Ted Schilowitz as Futurist in Residence 1) Leap Motion , a hand-tracking company, has raised $50M in Series C funding led by clients advised by J.P.

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E3 2018 Pre-show Roundup ? ?Beat Saber? on PSVR, Xbox Mum on VR, New Game Announcements & More

Road to VR

Microsoft Stays Mum on Xbox VR. Image courtesy Microsoft. During Microsoft’s main E3 2018 presentation, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer talked briefly on stage about the future of the brand, mentioning ‘future “consoles”‘ in development, but there was once again no sign of VR support for Xbox One. Major Tracking Update for Leap Motion. Image courtesy Leap Motion.

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Universities Drive VR/AR Research with Leap Motion

Leapmotion

43% of those are the Microsoft Hololens. 59% of universities have Leap Motion Controllers. The post Universities Drive VR/AR Research with Leap Motion appeared first on Leap Motion Blog. Augmented & Virtual Reality Education Leap Motion Team vr firstInfographic: Universities lead in #VR #AR research, number of headsets is exploding, and 6/10 use #LeapMotion.

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Project North Star is Now Open Source

Leapmotion

At Leap Motion, we envision a future where the physical and virtual worlds blend together into a single magical experience. While the classic Leap Motion Controller’s FOV is significantly beyond existing AR headsets such as Microsoft Hololens and Magic Leap One, it felt limiting on the North Star headset. The post Project North Star is Now Open Source appeared first on Leap Motion Blog.

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An In-depth Look at Microsoft’s HoloLens & Mixed Reality Ecosystem

Road to VR

Microsoft is taking a holistic approach with Windows Mixed Reality being baked into Windows 10, meaning that developers can create a single application that can run on the HoloLens, on one of their partner VR headsets, on a Surface tablet, or as a desktop app. At Microsoft’s Build conference today, the company is announcing a new OEM VR partner with HP as well as inside-out, six degree-of-freedom input controllers for VR headsets made by Microsoft partners like Acer.

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The VRScout Report – The Week in VR Review

VRScout

The Chinese company is also making a standalone VR headset for Google’s upcoming WorldSense platform and a standalone device for Microsoft’s Windows 10 Mixed Reality platform. San Francisco-based Leap Motion has raised a $50M Series C for their hand- and finger-tracking technology. The round was led by JP Morgan Asset management, and this fresh influx of cash brings Leap Motion’s total funding to almost $95M.

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See Whac-A-Mole In AR With This Black Mirror-Inspired HoloLens Prototype

UploadVR Between Realities podcast

We also tested combining the HoloLens with the Leap Motion because of the more accurate hand tracking. Although the Leap Motion controller gives the player the ability to have freedom of interaction with their hands, we had to attach the Leap Motion controller to the HoloLens. Another thing is, the Leap Motion controller data had to be transferred to the Hololens through a network solution in order to build the application for the HoloLens.

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VR Flight Simulator Lets You Explore the World and the Web

Leapmotion

FlyInside FSX is a plugin for Microsoft Flight Simulator and Prepar3D that brings you inside a completely realistic airplane flight deck. Daniel’s first stretch goal for the Kickstarter was to bring hands into the experience, and he’s already made major progress with his Leap Motion integration. The post VR Flight Simulator Lets You Explore the World and the Web appeared first on Leap Motion Blog.

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What Would a Truly 3D Operating System Look Like?

Leapmotion

Jody Medich is a UX designer and researcher who believes that the next giant leap in technology involves devices and interfaces that can “speak human.” Two projects from Microsoft, Pivot and SandDance , demonstrate the power of dynamic movement between data visualizations to reveal patterns within data. appeared first on Leap Motion Blog. Art & Design Augmented & Virtual Reality Leap Motion Team OS Interaction UX Design browser cognitive friction

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RealMax Qian review: wide FOV AR is amazing!

The Ghost Howls

In my unboxing video, you may see that I’ve found an additional Leap Motion v1 controller + Leap Motion mount for RealMax + USB-C cable for Leap Motion. If you need a wide-FOV AR headset and you have a limited budget, go for the Leap Motion North Star.

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My predictions for augmented reality in 2019

The Ghost Howls

Magic Leap. Me, wearing a Magic Leap One. The most important news has been for sure the launch of the Magic Leap One. You may hate or love Magic Leap, but the fact that it has released a product is for sure a great news for all the ecosystem : if after all those investments, that startup failed, it would have had a ripple effect on all the ecosystem, making investors lose trust in augmented reality. Rear view of the Magic Leap One. Leap Motion.

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All you need to know on HoloLens 2

The Ghost Howls

They teased a lot of interesting features and services of the device, and left the remaining technical details to some technical sheets on Microsoft website. There was a patent claiming that Microsoft was able to double the field of view with regard to the original HoloLens and it seems that that rumor was true: Alex Kipman has claimed that the FOV of the new HoloLens is MORE THAN DOUBLE than the FOV of the original one. Woman wearing a HoloLens2 device (Image by Microsoft).

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OpenXR Now Certifying Headset & App Compliance, Adds Extensions for Hand-tracking & Eye-tracking

Road to VR

The time to embrace OpenXR is now,” said Don Box, Technical Fellow at Microsoft. “In ” Khronos says that Facebook has shipped an OpenXR implementation for both Quest and Rift, and Microsoft has shipped an implementation for WMR headsets and HoloLens 2.

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NoUI/ Zero UI Concept: What Can Stimulate AR and VR Further Development?

ARPost

Yes, there is Microsoft Hololens that allows its users to click and open the menu using a hand, but far more expected is the integration of one of the Leap Motion or ManoMotion (or any other) solutions with the mass-produced products. Project North Star; Source: Leap Motion.

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WCVRI: Hands-on with new North Star headset, Virtualizer 2, Pareal VR and more!

The Ghost Howls

Project North Star is an opensource reference design for a wide-FOV augmented reality headset that Leap Motion (now Ultraleap ) has given to the community. Keep in mind that Magic Leap One has a diagonal FOV of 50° and you realize why the word “only” is between quotes. The hand tracking was fabulous as always thanks to Leap Motion and its Orion tracking. Probably Shadow Creator took inspiration from Microsoft device when designing it.

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Hands-On: Oculus Quest Hand Tracking Feels Great, But It’s Not Perfect

VRScout

As for actions such as pulling up menus or teleporting around virtual environments, it’s possible that hand gestures such as the ones used with the Microsoft HoloLens or Leap Motion could resolve this. It’s a strange feeling not having any feeling when touching or grabbing things, something dedicated Leap Motion and HoloLens users are already used too. That’s a pretty big leap for VR, and hand tracking pushes us even further.

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The XR Week Peek (2021.02.01): Facebook is very confident in Quest 2 sales, Valve is working on Neural Interfaces, and more!

The Ghost Howls

After stepping down from the role of CEO of Magic Leap, Rony Abovitz has started a new venture called Sun And Thunder about digital beings. UltraLeap (formerly known as Leap Motion) has just launched the 5th iteration of its hands-tracking runtime, called Gemini.

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Augmented reality is reaching a mature state according to Gartner

The Ghost Howls

Traditionally, leading tech vendors have invested in distributed network infrastructure, but many of them (such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft) are adapting to a new paradigm to support localized, persistent, collaborative, shared, multiuser interactions. Header image by Leap Motion). According to the very famous market analysis company Gartner, Augmented Reality is no more an “emerging” technology, but it has graduated as a mature one.

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The XR Week Peek (2021.03.22): Sony reveals PSVR2 controllers, FRL shows the wristband of the future, and more!

The Ghost Howls

Facebook has acquired Ctrl+Labs some years ago, and now it is using its expertise to create a wristband that can sense the motion information that your brain is sending to your hands. Image by Microsoft). Happy Spring everyone! The Winter is over, and the trees are blossoming again!

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Turn Any Surface Into An AR Experience With Post Mobile AR

VRScout

Spacee will be the first to tell you that what they are offering is not the same as something like Microsoft HoloLens, Leap Motion, or Magic Leap technology. Walmart, Coca Cola and Mercedes Benz are using Post Mobile AR to give customers a more interactive in-store experience.

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WCVRI Day 1: Hands-on RealMax AR glasses and Droolon F1 eye tracking!

The Ghost Howls

And there are booths of many important companies : Lenovo, Microsoft, HP, Huawei, GoPro, etc… so this event has cool stuff to showcase. The virtual elements spanned all my FOV until the frame of the glasses , and this was another smart thing, because my brain was ok to see that there were holograms only inside the frame of the glass, and then after the frame there was nothing anymore (it is the same trick of Magic Leap ). Leap Motion) on the same headset.

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Intel’s Project Alloy Demonstrates “Merged Reality”

VRScout

This provides Leap Motion type hand tracking as well as six-degrees-of-freedom, room-scale positional tracking. Much like the Microsoft Hololens the user is looking at the real world and the device overlays virtual objects and avatars into your view so they appear to be part of the real world. The demo continued using natural hand motions to push a switch to open another room containing a virtual golden lathe.

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Intel’s Project Alloy Demonstrates “Merged Reality”

VRScout

This provides Leap Motion type hand tracking as well as six-degrees-of-freedom, room-scale positional tracking. Much like the Microsoft Hololens the user is looking at the real world and the device overlays virtual objects and avatars into your view so they appear to be part of the real world. The demo continued using natural hand motions to push a switch to open another room containing a virtual golden lathe.

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The Ghost Howls’s VR Week Peek (2019.07.15): Apple kills its AR glasses, Oculus full-steam ahead on 2nd gen VR and much more!

The Ghost Howls

All the other major companies (Samsung, Huawei, etc…) are working on AR and Apple for sure can’t stop experimenting with if it doesn’t want to miss the next communication platform as Microsoft did with Windows Phone. Microsoft has released this week a new video showing how the game will work. Microsoft is launching in two weeks a private beta for iOS users. In all of this, someone has created the design for a Leap Motion mount for the Index that exploits the frunk.

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GameFace Plans GF-LD Headset With SteamVR And Android Support

UploadVR Between Realities podcast

Both headsets are said to feature a Tegra chip and 2560 x 1440 OLED displays, along with Leap Motion, front-facing stereo cameras and eye-tracking. The VR industry is moving a lot faster than it did in 2013 — when GameFace started — and companies like Microsoft, Google and Facebook are racing to provide better and more convenient solutions built by ever-growing teams. GameFace Labs is a company I’ve seen at countless VR events.

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Pimax Announces Improvements to “5K” Plus and “8K” Headsets, Updates on Accessories

Road to VR

” SEE ALSO Most Windows VR Headsets Have Vanished from the Microsoft Store, Limited Stock Elsewhere. Promised back in the Kickstarter days, Pimax says that it’s been delayed due to Leap Motion’s acquisition by ULtraHaptics. Pimax is continuously tweaking their lineup of wide field of view VR headsets in effort to hone in on a finished product.

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The XR Week Peek (2020.06.01): HP Reverb G2 launched, Qualcomm goes bullish on 5G and Wi-fi 6 and more!

The Ghost Howls

HP and Microsoft have a long track in offering enterprise hardware, so this headset may battle HTC on his own land (B2B). Rony Abovitz steps down from Magic Leap CEO. It is the end of an era: Abovitz has been the mastermind behind Magic Leap’s communication and vision.

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HTC Announces Vive Standalone For The Chinese Market

UploadVR Between Realities podcast

Microsoft, meanwhile, is partnering to release a series of Windows-powered VR headsets that require a PC to operate but also include motion controllers. Earlier this year we tested a Qualcomm system that incorporated Leap Motion’s hand tracking , which could provide an answer to the input question, and there are some companies working on full freedom hand controllers for mobile headsets so that is still a possibility as well.

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‘FlyInside Flight Simulator’ Preview – A Promising Start in VR-native Flying

Road to VR

FlyInside FSX , the crowdfunded VR plugin for Microsoft Flight Simulator X (2006) , was built well before first-party VR motion controllers existed, developed back in the DK2-era of 2015 as an ad hoc way of jumping into an already highly-detailed flight sim. What’s different about FlyInside though is both Rift and Vive users can use their respective motion controllers to manipulate levers, buttons, and requisite knobs.

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Who Will Own the Metaverse?

AR Insider

It’s been called the AR Cloud by many, the Magicverse by Magic Leap, the Mirrorworld by Wired, the Cyberverse by Huawei, Planet-scale AR by Niantic and Spatial Computing by academics. The incumbents like Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft or Snap already own global social graphs, but perhaps looking to unseat them could be the multiplayer gaming behemoths like Sony, Activision Blizzard or EA, or 3D-specific ideas like Aura’s “avatar as a service”.

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Tomorrow's Tech Today: Takeaways From Augmented World Expo 2019

Charlie Fink

RealMax's AR and VR device with hand tracking by Leap Motion and an epic 102-degree field of view, was used for a multiplayer AR game which involved grabbing fish and knocking over boxes. Apple begins its World Wide Developer Conference on Monday, June 3rd; Microsoft, Facebook (Oculus), Google, Amazon, Snap, and Magic Leap, had theirs earlier in the year. The 10th annual Augmented World Expo ( AWE ) wrapped on Friday, May 31st.

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The Ghost Howls’s VR Week Peek (2019.09.22): Oculus working on AR glasses with Luxottica, Apple glasses FOV discovered and much more!

The Ghost Howls

CEOs means a lot for a company: think about how Microsoft has changed going from Ballmer to Nadella. It has bought the hand-tracking company Leap Motion various months ago for $30M since the two hardware are a perfect fit the one for the other. Another week, another roundup of amazing AR/VR news!

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The Ghost Howls’s VR Week Peek (2019.10.21): Daydream is dead, Varjo VR-2 is out, Sony makes AR glasses and much more!

The Ghost Howls

VR-2 Pro adds an integrated Leap Motion and a 10m cable. In them you can find some interesting insights on how Microsoft designed the UX of HoloLens (go to section 2 of the slides linked below). Last week I told you that most probably I wouldn’t have written a Week Peek this Sunday because I’m very busy showcasing our game at the WCVRI exhibition in Nanchang. Actually I’m busy, I’m stressed and super-tired (I will tell you my experience very soon!),

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Analyzing Oculus Santa Cruz patent images

The Ghost Howls

The only headset that has such kind of strange thing on one side is the Magic Leap One , that uses it to track the controllers with magnetical fields… but we all know that Oculus actually uses optical tracking to track the controllers. attaching Leap Motion through an adapter). Someone noticed that it looks a bit like the Microsoft Surface charger and that little line drawn inside it may be the led related to the charging operation.

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