The world of virtual-reality enthusiasts is one of early adoption, but also of adaptation. In the absence of polished consumer units, the only real hardware language available to hobbyists is a pidgin of devkits and kludgy peripherals; VR meetups and developer jams are still a chaotic sea of cobbled-together controllers.
Now, though, it appears that some streamlining is finally on the horizon. This morning, Leap Motion and the OSVR open-source ecosystem announced a partnership that would allow Razer’s OSVR HDK (hacker development kit) to ship later this year with a Leap Motion sensor embedded in its faceplate.
The sensor, which allows for nearly latency-free hand- and finger-tracking in 3-D space, has been a longstanding favorite among VR developers for its elegant controller-free solution—so much so that last fall Leap Motion began shipping a $20 mount that could attach its sensor to the front of an Oculus Rift devkit.
But by becoming an official partner of the OSVR’s modular headset, Leap Motion hopes to clear the playing field a bit. “Being embedded is just a better experience,” says Leap Motion CEO Michael Buckwald. “For developers, there’s no fragmentation, and it’s better for users. That’s always the end goal.”
Leap Motion’s sensor is already embedded in laptops and desktops from both Asus and HP; this is simply their first official partnership in the VR space, where input is still very much an open question. The virtual and augmented reality markets—together, let’s just call it “immersive tech”—has seemingly trifurcated into three primary categories: desktop PC, mobile, and console. On the console side, PlayStation has made its Project Morpheus prototype compatible with two of its existing controllers, the PlayStation Move and the Dualshock 4 gamepad. Things are muddier in the desktop segment; while Valve software is creating custom controllers for the Vive headset it produced in collaboration with HTC, Oculus still hasn’t announced any input solutions for the forthcoming consumer version of its Rift. (While Oculus purchased Leap Motion competitor Nimble Sense last year, it hasn’t yet confirmed whether the fruits of that acquisition would appear in the Rift.) And Samsung’s Gear VR—currently the most full-featured mobile solution, and one seeing a full consumer release this year–utilizes a small touchpad located on the headset, while also allowing the use of Bluetooth Android-friendly game controllers.
What all of these solutions are missing, of course, is Kinect-on-steroids experience of using your hands in VR—for navigation, selection, even control of three-dimensional objects in three-dimensional space. “We very much think the answer is going to be hands, and that we’re going to be providing that tracking,” Buckwald says. And because the sensor’s computational strength lies in its software rather than its hardware, the company can push frequent updates to keep its capabilities cutting-edge long after the headset goes home with you.
The OSVR HDK, which was first announced at CES and January and ships to developers in June, presents a much more modular approach than any other headset currently known about. While its resolution is just about identical to Oculus’ DK2 devkit, its open-source nature means it’s 3D-printable and allows for nearly unfettered modification and addons. (Even if developers buy a HDK without the optional Leap Motion embed, they can swap a different faceplate in later.) Yet, the OSVR HDK isn’t Leap Motion’s only partnership play. Far from it, in fact. Buckwald says the company has been talking to “pretty much all the major players” in the space. “Our goal is to be embedded everywhere,” he says. “This is not an experiment for us—we want to be the primary input for VR.”
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