leapmotion

[leapmotion]

Software Update: New Features in Airspace Home and Leap Motion Software v1.2

As we continue to build the next generation of Leap Motion tracking, we’re also making improvements to our software and the Airspace experience. With our latest software release, version 1.2, you’ll now find an experimental feature playground, notifications, and significant improvements to HP embedded devices. Take a look inside!

Airspace Labs

Airspace Labs is an experimental feature playground to augment the Home user experience. For the first time, you can sort your apps based on the last time you opened them. Based on your feedback and feature requests, we’ll be adding new features to Labs in future releases.

Airspace Notifications

Airspace now has notifications, so we can send periodic updates about new apps, as well as any other interesting news relating to Leap Motion. This way, it’s easy for you to stay in the loop.

Other major features and updates

Italian and Korean language support added to Airspace Home and Control Panel

Automatic firmware upgrade for HP embedded devices, which now use the Leap Motion driver

Tracking and connectivity reliability improvements for HP embedded devices

Users can now opt out of usage metrics

To see more changes that happened under the hood, check out the full release notes. You can see them on our community forum post or with the download itself.

Download version 1.2 »

[leapmotion]

Introducing: Vimeo Couch Mode

Creatives across the map – indie filmmakers, emerging musicians, dancers, actors, installation artists, and beyond – all flock to Vimeo to forge their personal brands and spread their work around the world. Likewise, savvy culture-mongerers from far and wide visit Vimeo to hunt for the next big thing, or perhaps just to find a 5-minute slice of high-def humanity to punctuate their day.

Vimeo Couch Mode for Leap Motion places the power of Vimeo navigation at your fingertips, so you can “leap into your couch” when it’s time to dim the lights and depart from real life for inspiration. Now you can show off your own videos, browse your News Feed, or sift through your Watch Later list – all with your hands in the air. To celebrate, we’ve assembled an all-star team of Vimeo videos featuring touchless interaction. You can reach into the whole collection right here, right now. Here are just a few:

     You can access Couch Mode from virtually anywhere on Vimeo – just look for the couch icon in your favorite videos and channels. We’ve highlighted it in red below. Once you see it once, you’ll discover it everywhere on Vimeo.

The screen will go dark. When you place your hands above your Controller, you’ll immediately see your fingers identified as small circles. Tap to play or pause, fast forward with a twirl, and swipe to move on to the next video.

Concerts, street theater, amazing animations – what channels will you reach into? The possibilities are endless.

GIF courtesy of Vimeo Staff Blog

[leapmotion]

Synesthesia on a Snowy Evening

When Craig Winslow and Justin Kuzma paint interactive digital media directly onto the physical world, your senses feast in unexpected ways. Last fall, they delivered Growth, an immersive forest of trees you could manipulate and command with your hands in the air. Their most recent Leap Motion installation, ZX, went up this February in Vermont, where the team installed the 10-foot geometric structure in a snowy courtyard at Champlain College.

ZX combines projection mapping with Leap Motion technology to explore the boundaries of color and sound in 3D space. A strong tone welcomes you as you hover your hands over the Controller. Bells chime as you wiggle your fingers. The higher you lift your hands, the brighter the color. Reaching your fingers forward makes for richer saturation, while panning your hand left or right adjusts hue. Hues pan left and right in the stereo speakers, so that your hands begin to define the limits of an intangible field of view.

For the sonic side of things, Craig and Justin enlisted the sound design talent of Nicholas Giordani. Inspired by the theremin, Nicholas mapped sounds to gestures, as well as created a harmonic scale controlled by the height of your hand. “Because we aren’t limited by physical interaction, like turning a knob or pressing a button, we have a lot more room for sonic exploration,” he says. “It’s almost like we’re creating a new instrument.”

The finished project makes you feel like you’re conducting an orchestra and a light show simultaneously – a blending of the senses that reflects the experience of synesthesia. At the same time, the combination of light and sound creates a surreal experience, where the interactive space takes on an almost tactile reality.

ZX's sound and visual design made the Leap Motion Controller's interactive space as intuitive as touch. Learn more from the creator on Developer Labs »

For the ZX crew, this first iteration is just the tip of the iceberg. “One of the interests for us in adding a microphone is that we can visualize sound from the user as color as well. Combined with kinetic hand movements as color and sound, we could have someone could sing a note that translates to a color, while creating a harmony with their hands,” Craig told us.

The team is also hoping to take the installation into the education space to teach children about the color spectrum dynamically in 3D, both in large scale settings – museums and exploratoriums – and smaller ones – the classroom and the home.

What do you think about 3D motion control as an exploratory engine for color and sound? Tweet us at @LeapMotion or share your thoughts on Facebook.

[leapmotion]

Store + Shipping: Always Be Consolidating

We’ve made some changes to how we ship the Leap Motion Controller globally to customers who purchase from our website. As we continue to build the next generation of our software, we want to streamline how we sell and ship our devices so we can be more efficient. At the same time, we want to let you know what’s going on, and share the changes happening on our online store and shipping procedures.

Online Store and Shipping Changes

Shipping and tax charges. We no longer collect estimated taxes, customs duties or other import fees for shipments outside of the United States. As a result, customers outside the U.S. will need to ensure that all applicable taxes and duties in their destination country are paid.

Shipping times and rates. We’re now shipping all of our devices from a single distribution center in California. This means that shipping times will be slightly longer for international customers. However, it also means that shipping costs should go down for many customers.

Fewer currencies. With our new store and shipping platform, we’re now rolling back our online store currency support to the Euro and USD. Customers in regions outside of Europe will now see Controller prices in USD, while Switzerland, Sweden, and the UK are changing to Euros. But don’t worry – the Airspace Store will continue to support the current 14 currencies.

Regional Pricing: Your Questions Answered

One of the biggest questions we hear from customers is – why are the prices different in different countries?

Controllers. We have regional pricing for our devices due to the costs of doing business in foreign countries. Since we’re a US-based company, our prices reflect a variety of conditions in different markets.

Airspace apps. The Airspace Store has used the same exchange rate for the Euro and other global currencies since we launched our global currencies feature. But that leads us to our final update of the day – going forward, we will be updating local app prices on a monthly basis. International pricing will include the base price, plus VAT in European countries. Then it will round up to the nearest nine (e.g. €8.79 instead of €9.99).

As we continue to build our platform, we’ll keep you posted on all the latest developments. We’d love to hear your thoughts about these changes – let us know in the comments.

[leapmotion]

BT and the Search for New Sound

When Grammy-nominated composer BT was just a kid,  his music teacher told him that nothing new would ever happen in the industry again – that becoming a master involved artfully rehashing the past.

Thankfully, BT rejected this idea early on. While he honed his skills studying the classics, the outpourings of his imagination found inspiration in the everyday sounds most people overlook. The nighttime orchestra of insects. The meter of a grandfather clock. In order to rein the subtle beauty of these sounds into cohesive compositions, he realized he needed tools that didn’t exist… yet.

BT knew that in order to bring the music in his head to life, he needed to place himself at the razor’s edge of digital innovation – he needed to become a technologist.

Over 15 years later, in addition to composing music and recording albums of his own, BT has pushed the limits of musical technology into the records of industry giants – including the likes of Sting, Britney Spears, Peter Gabriel, and Madonna. When he discovered Leap Motion, he knew it was an instant fit. He also knew that he wanted to share his creative spark with the world.

That’s why, along with Dr. Richard Boulanger of the Berklee College of Music, he created MUSE – a brand-new app that gives you the power to create and perform your own ambient music in the air with your hands above the Leap Motion Controller. MUSE lets you reach out and layer complex chord sets, intricate drum grooves, atmospheric sounds, and more using an intuitive cubic interface to transpose in any key.

Have you always fancied yourself a composer? Are you a seasoned musician looking for new inspiration? We want to hear your best tracks. Record your MUSE creations, post on YouTube or Vimeo, and tweet them at @LeapMotion or share them with us on Facebook.

[leapmotion]

Vimeo at Your Fingertips + 4 More New Apps

This week, ditch the remote and grab the popcorn with Vimeo Couch Mode and Leap Motion interaction – a whole new way to watch high-quality videos. Plus, a fast-paced speed racer that lives in your browser, magical fireflies, an arcade-style dubstep game, and an elegant wooden puzzle.

Vimeo Couch Mode

A world of videos at your fingertips. Now you can watch collections of videos on Vimeo with a wave of your hand. Hit play or pause with a tap of your finger, fast-forward with a finger twirl, or change the video with a swipe. Watch high-definition Staff Picks or your own playlist.

Reach out on the web »

HexGL

Blitz through your browser. Control a high-speed futuristic hovercraft in this free web game. Tight corners, blazing speeds, and booster strips – all built in WebGL. We recommend using Chrome for this game.

Reach out on the web »

Fire Flies

Relax in the serene world of Fireflies. In this magical scene, fireflies are drawn to your colorful fingertips, then change colors and fly away.

Free for Mac and Windows »

DubWars

Don’t just drop the beat – destroy it. DubWars puts the power of dubstep in your hands as you fight waves of flying enemies. Blow them away with lasers and sonic blasts as your weapons fire to the beat.

Download for Windows »

TiltYourBall

Your only opponent is gravity itself. Navigate a small metal ball through various levels in this minimalist puzzle game. TiltYourBall remembers your progress as you play – great for quick, relaxing breaks at work!

Download for Mac »

[leapmotion]

Watch the LA Fashion District Spring to Life

SKYLINE is a 10-day architecture showcase that stretches across a completely walkable 10 x 10 block grid in downtown LA – where spaces ranging from penthouses to historic banks to hotel lobbies host interactive installations that embody the cultural landscape of Los Angeles.

Leap Motion was a natural fit for SKYLINE participant Behnaz Farahi, a designer, architect, and Annenberg Fellow at the USC School of Cinematic Arts whose research investigates the potential of interactive environments in relation to the human body. Her project Breathing Wall brought a large fabric sculpture to life in the heart of the Fashion District during the festival with Leap Motion technology.

The piece encapsulates some of the larger questions about interactive design that Farahi seeks to address with her installations. “How might we envision a genuinely interactive space whose form and physical configuration can respond to and learn from its users?” Farahi asks, “and how might such a space influence how we inhabit our environment, and change the way we live?”  

Farahi’s body of work tackles these questions through investigative kinetic design, her central focus being the relationship between materials, form, and interactive systems of control.

“Mobile devices already use techniques based on touch-and gesture-based languages – swiping, clicking, dragging and so on – as a natural, intuitive mechanism of control,” she says. “But can these techniques be used to control entire environments?”  

For Fahari, the prospect of controlling entire rooms or structures with Leap Motion technology intrigues her the most – the notion that 3D motion control can transform a 2D work of art from a simple narrative into a living choreography of space.

[leapmotion]

8 New Apps: Outer Space Shooter, Ambient Music, and More

Get ready to play, learn, and create. From arcade-inspired games and alien fishing holes, to Internet time travel and ambient music, the newest apps in Airspace have something for everyone. Plus, three newly available trial apps – so you can try them for free before buying the full versions.

The 4D Finger Tennis

Take your game to the next dimension. Control a futuristic paddle as you battle the computer for tennis supremacy. The 4D Finger Tennis features intuitive controls, rich graphics, and fast gameplay.

Free for Windows »

Galactic Asteroid Fighter

Outer space just got a lot more graphic. Inspired by classic arcade shooters, Galactic Asteroid Fighter throws you into the cockpit of a spaceship – in the middle of a dangerous asteroid field! Destroy the asteroids and watch out for enemy aliens.

Download for Mac and Windows »

aliZen Fishing

This isn’t your grandfather’s fishing hole. Cast your line and reel in alien fish across 4 chapters and more than 50 unique scenes. Collect bait, catch bigger fish, and unlock Zen mode for a relaxing fishing experience.

Download for Mac »

Muse

Create your own ambient music. Reach into a world of interactive cubes that let you compose and perform beautiful ambient sounds – including chords, drums, natural sounds, echo effects, and more. Muse lets you record and save your creations to enjoy whenever you want.

Download for Mac »

Time Travel

Spin through the past, present, and future. Time Travel is an Internet time machine that lives in your browser. Dive into a unique photo browser that lets you explore historical events and see how everything from food to bicycles evolves through time. (To use web apps like Time Travel, be sure to check “Allow Web Apps” in the Leap Motion Control Panel, and use Google Chrome.)

Reach out on the web »

TomBraining The Gallery Trial

Expand your cultural horizons. TomBraining The Gallery is a unique tour through more than 250 classical art and music masterpieces – plus games and puzzles to challenge your knowledge.

Free for Mac and Windows »

AirInput Trial

Take control of your computer. AirInput lets you point and click with ease by placing the cursor in your fingers. With the trial version, you get the full premium experience for a limited time.

Free for Mac and Windows »

Skywriting Alphabets Trial

Discover the joy of writing. The trial version of Skywriting Alphabets lets your child practice their writing skills with random letters at their own pace. Download the full version to unlock three more gameplay modes, and watch your child learn the letters of the alphabet.

Free for Mac and Windows »

[leapmotion]

How Japan Inspires Great Apps and Musical Experiments

With one of the largest Leap Motion communities on the planet, Japan is an incredible source of 3D interactive creations. A photo hackathon of epic proportions. Three unique web apps. Two Airspace experiments from game designer Eddie Lee. A Leap Motion-driven industrial album and biometric beatboxing. And that’s just scratching the surface!

This week, we’re looking at how Japanese developers and artists have been inspired by 3D interaction. But first, some great news for Japanese Leap Motion lovers. With the Japanese retail launch of the Leap Motion Controller, you can now find our technology in SoftBank BB stores throughout Japan.

But that’s only half of the good news. Leap Motion is becoming more global than ever, so we recently added a new language translations feature to the Airspace Store. In honor of our Japanese launch, we’re introducing the feature with full Japanese support. Want to check it out? Scroll down to the bottom of the Airspace Store and use the dropdown menu. Now, onwards!

3 Web Apps from Japanese Developers

Time Travel

After winning at last month’s Japan Photo Hack Day, the creators of Time Travel have brought their interactive web app to Airspace. Reach into the past and explore photos of your search topics and interests, and twirl your finger to move time forwards or backwards.

Reach out on the web »

The Nikkei: Japanese Newspaper

The financial world at your fingertips. Featuring high-quality reporting and in-depth analysis, The Nikkei is a Japanese-language newspaper that covers economic and business news. With a subscription to the Nikkei online edition, you can access the latest news and archives at leap.nikkei.com.

Videogram

Watch and discover your favorite videos. Videogram pulls the best scenes from a video to create summaries in pictures that can be searched and curated. With a wave of your hand, Videogram lets you browse and explore videos as easily as photos.

Reach out on the web »

2 Experimental Games from Eddie Lee

Lotus

As you saw in our video, Eddie Lee is inspired by music and nature to create fun, playful experiences with the latest technologies. Lotus is a quirky set of interactive musical toys that lets you dynamically create your own cool sounds.

Download free for Mac and Windows »

Kyoto

Feeling contemplative? Dip into the mysterious and melancholy world of Kyoto. Mind-melting ambient music and beautiful visuals reveal an intuitive puzzle that you play with your hands. Just like the city itself, it’s a magical experience that will never leave you.

Download free for Mac and Windows »

Musical Experiments with Leap Motion Interaction

Tokyo DJ’s Industrial Leap Motion Album

Launched in October, Tokyo-based industrial artist Aliceffekt’s album Telekinetic was the first known album release created with the Leap Motion Controller. By translating hand movements into retro-futuristic sounds, Aliceffekt created the full 20-minute ambient album with 3D interaction as his main instrument.

Read more »

Humanelectro: Biometric Beatboxing

At a live event in Tokyo called ∑(SIGMA), Ryo Fujimoto created live audio and visuals from electrical sensors hooked to his body, along with the Leap Motion Controller, which tracked his finger positions in real time.

What inspires you to create? We’d love to hear about how you use the Leap Motion Controller to express yourself. Let us hear your story on Twitter @LeapMotion or on Facebook.

[leapmotion]

Transform Any Surface into a Musical Instrument

Interactive art helps us extract impulses from our brains, thread by thread, and enact them in the world. Music takes this medium into mind-bending heights. What if we were able to transform any surface into a living, breathing musical instrument? Emerging designer and musician Felix Faire recently did just that with Contact, an acoustic Leap Motion experiment created for the Royal Academy’s “Sensing Spaces” exhibition.

As a first-year architecture student, Faire was struck by how listening to musical progressions as you walk through a space affects the way you move, so he designed an entire concert hall and gallery in the linear structure of a sonata. These initial musings grew into a much larger project on spatial music perception entitled “Music Aided Design.” It was then that coding became an integral part of Felix’s creative life, and he knew 3D motion control would become an essential exploratory engine for his thesis. 

“The fidelity of the Leap Motion made me realize this kind of device could track even more subtle musical articulations, and perhaps even be used as a three-dimensional instrument in itself,” Faire told us. “Now I understand more of what is possible with Leap Motion. I have ambitions to try much more complex gestures and motions in future projects.”

For Contact, Felix used hand height, finger count, and a squeezing gesture to trigger various effects in the loop – the visual output influencing how the audience attempt to interact with the sound waves. “Abstract audiovisual synchronicity, while extremely elusive, can be a very exciting and compelling experience,” Felix concluded.

“Sensing Spaces” will continue to run at the Royal Academy in London through April 6th, 2014. It features architectural practices from six countries spanning four continents. If you plan to attend, be sure to tweet impressions, images, or video from your experience to @LeapMotion using the hashtag #SensingSpaces.

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Martini in One Hand, Exploding Rainbow in the Other

We’ve talked about the magic of WebGL before – how it unleashes the power of the web to do incredible things in 3D. With this latest experiment from Bartek Drozdz, you can reach into your browser and play with a variety of cool visuals to music. A liquid gem, cityscape, spherical lines, and more, all responding to Codex Machine’s S.P.Y. or even your own microphone.

As the creative director at Tool of North America, a production company based in Santa Monica, Bartek brings interactive digital experiences to life. Last month, Tool decided to throw a party for its employees and friends in a large building known locally as “the shed.” To bring some WebGL zest to the party, Bartek started working on sound-reactive visuals that would project on a wall – using the huge space to his advantage.

Next, Bartek took it a step further by introducing Leap Motion interaction to the setup. As you can see (and experience) for yourself, the results were spectacular. You can fly and steer between buildings, create strange wave reactions, or change your point of view. Each mode is different, and it can be challenging to discover what they all do. It’s all part of the fun.

“Part of the challenge was that we did not want to put any instructions anywhere, so we had to do something that was intuitive,” says Bartek. “Just let people know that they can hover the device with their hand and see what happens. It made people curious, but was also easy to use. Our guests could interact with the visuals using one hand, and holding a drink in another.”

The web is growing all the time. With these kinds of early experiments, we can catch a glimpse into what the future web might look like – with complex 3D sights and sounds created with little more than JavaScript and the magic of WebGL shaders.

Want to dive into Bartek’s trippy experience of sight and sound? You can check out his live demo on Tool’s website. To use Leap Motion on the web, be sure that you’ve checked the “Allow Web Apps” box in the Leap Motion Control Panel (General tab). As always, we recommend Google Chrome.

What do you imagine we’ll see in the web of the future? Let us know in the comments below, or give us a shout on Facebook and Twitter.

[leapmotion]

Robot Choreography and the Smart Future of Responsive Architecture

Ever since the first human stacked one brick onto another, architecture has been concerned with creating immovable things. Even with the rise of smart interconnected environments – where lights, heating, doors, and other systems within a building all work together – the physical structures of our buildings remain the same. As a result, the movements and interactions of people within these spaces are shaped by the buildings themselves, like water flowing through a canyon.

This is why architecture and urban design are about more than simply ensuring that our buildings are safe and efficient. Or that they are merely beautiful. Buildings can inspire or isolate, connect or divide, so that debates about everything from the nature of community to the fate of doorknobs have radical social implications. How we live and work every day cuts to the core of what makes us human. But what if buildings could respond to our movements and gestures? What would that change?

Inside the Aether Project

Technology is the story of how humans have embedded mind into matter. Architecture is no exception.

These were the questions asked by a team of students at the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design. Refik Anadol, Raman Mustafa, Julietta Gil, and Farzad Mirshafiei wanted to explore how architecture itself could become smart and responsive. Technology, they say, is the story of how humans have embedded mind into matter – and architecture is no exception.

Using KUKA KR150-2 robots, projection mapping, and motion control, the Aether team created “an immersive interactive environment that gives a glimpse into the near future of artificial intelligence and its effects on human existence in an environment that bridges the physical and the digital.”

Aether begins with Leap Motion interaction. The movements of your hand have the power to transform a robot-controlled surface geometry. At the same time, another robot projects elaborate designs that are synchronized with the physical geometry, creating a choreographed robotic dance. The patterns that course along the surface are constantly shifting. Geometry, depth, shadow, and color – all rise and fall as the pattern changes.

Interaction as design medium

What does this have to do with architecture? With the growing use of robots and smart hardware, architects will have a lot more freedom in how they design the world around us. The Aether Project shows how a physical structure can be transformed through interaction, and takes it a step further by creating designs that can be layered on top of that structure. Interaction becomes a physical design medium, just like it already has for the digital world.

We’ve just scratched the surface of the ideas behind The Aether Project, which include thoughts on the nature of consciousness, artificial intelligence, and how human behavior might factor into the blueprints of the future. Check out the extended version of this post on our developer blog, including a Q&A with the creators. (For more interactive art with big ideas, you might want also to visit the digital forests of Growth or the stark beauty of Ascension.)

We’d love to hear what you think. Where will this desire to implant our consciousness within machines take us? And how will we interact with machines in the future?

[leapmotion]

Ascension: Where Interactive Animation Meets Hand-Crafted Sculpture

When digital art and physical sculptures are melded together, the resulting creation can be spectacular and strange. Recently, visitors to an exhibition at Eyebeam, an NYC-based art and technology center, discovered what happens when you throw 3D interaction into the mix. You become an artist yourself – creating between the real and unreal. You become part of Ascension.

The exhibit was a collaboration between multimedia artist William Ismael and sculptor Carrie Mae Rose. At Hackerloop, an innovation lab and hardware playground, William has been developing interactive experiences to bring rooms to life. Carrie Mae is known for her evocative sculptures that shock and endanger – working in wire, scissors, and razor blades.

Ascension reflects their different backgrounds – bringing together a hand-built tetrahedral wing structure with digital animations and motion control to become something new. Recently, we caught up with William to ask about his creative process and the work that went into creating Ascension. Plus, a preview of his next installation, Visual Composer – which lets him generate live visuals with his fingers.

Ascension

Starting Point: Inspiration

My biggest visual influences are nature, the sky, the ocean, the cosmos, sacred geometry, architecture, mathematics, and human-built objects. What inspired me to use Leap Motion was the possibility of using our main manual tools as human beings – our hands – to generate animated art, in real physical spaces, in real time. It personalizes the spatial experience because people become co-creators of the space in a very intuitive way.

With the Leap Motion Controller, people become co-creators of the space in a very intuitive way.

Installations bring people together in a physical space, so using the Leap Motion Controller for the Ascension installation made it not just art to look at, but something reactive – in a unique co-creative experience. Leap Motion control was critical in giving people the power of triggering and controlling the animations of the projection mapping. Its precision when it came to subtle movements and the use of fingers made it the right device to use.

Creative Process

Incorporating 3D motion-controlled projection mapping onto the 3-dimensional angel-winged sculpture on the wall was a very technical process, involving trials and successes. My first spatial experience with Leap Motion was not for a space, but an interactive art app for the desktop as a way to test it right away.

For Ascension, first I programmed an interactive animation on my desktop, where Leap Motion was used to control it with my hands. I played with it on my MacBook Pro until I got to a place that felt right. Colors were vibrating and forms were interlocking – all by waving my hands in the air.

The next step was mapping the 3D structure through the projector. Using Processing with MadMapper, I ran a code-generated 3D animation, with the interactive animation triggered by Leap Motion interaction on top of it. Finally, I ran up and down the stairs for an entire week to problem-solve and adjust the details. Two projectors were used in the final installation.

Visual Composer

William’s experiment with Ascension led to his next project – a visual composer that brings together psychedelic colors with splattering paint and abstract geometry. While it’s still in development, William hopes to take Visual Composer to the next level as a live performance tool.

3D Motion Control &  Performance

The ability to control motion graphics in a space with my body movements does not just change performance – it creates a new type of performance. The way coded animations precisely sync to my movements gives life to a new human experience through the way Leap Motion is used. I can now perform to a crowd live on a large stage with my movements creating real-time visuals. It’s extremely exciting.

An interactive room can be life-changing. It affects people emotionally.... It’s not happening on a screen, but in real life in a real space, where our senses are the most sensitive.

I think 3D motion control can radically turn a normal room into a living world – where we, as humans, affect the environment with a wave of our arms. An interactive room can be life-changing. It affects people emotionally. We’re affected by every detail of our environment. By creating such a space, people can be taken instantly to an incredible journey. It’s not happening on a screen, but in real life in a real space, where our senses are the most sensitive.

From high-concept art and storytelling to virtual objects and drone experiments – where would you like to take Leap Motion interaction? Let us know your favorite experiments with art, music, and design on Facebook and Twitter.

[leapmotion]

Octagon in 60 Seconds + 4 More Fast-Paced New Games

This week in Airspace, stay alive for a minute at a time with Flow Studio’s newest fast-paced arcade game. Plus, foosball reimagined, match-3 cubes, Korean pop rhythms, an alcoholic balancing act, and 3D interactive mechanical models.

Octagon

Can you survive for 60 seconds? Flow Studio’s latest game is a minimal arcade thrill ride where you must spin your eight-sided world to dodge speed bumps and holes. Each level lasts only a minute, but time flies fast inside Octagon.

Download for Mac »

Foosack

Victory is your goooooooal! Foosack is a twist on classic foosball with one player per team – an attacker, defender, and goalie in one. Play against the computer or battle your friends in split-screen two-player mode.

Download for Mac and Windows »

Revertis3D

Time is not your friend in cube world. Revertis3D is a unique match-3 game where you must draw on cubes and complete the sequences – before time runs out.

Download for Mac and Windows »

Lama with a Beer!

Spilled beer is a tragedy. Be a hero and keep your beer aloft in this fun balancing game, featuring retro graphics and energetic Irish music. Challenge your friends and prove that you can stay level-headed under pressure.

Download for Mac and Windows »

POP UP

Dive in and master the beat. Wave your hands or fists, master the tempo, and hit falling lights with this rhythm action game that features multiple instruments and several Korean pop remixes.

Download for Windows »

Ossewa SolidWorks Plug-in

Explore mechanical creations. The Leap Motion plug-in for SolidWorks mechanical CAD software lets you zoom, pan, and rotate through virtual models – with support for part, assembly and drawing documents. Navigate cars, engines, and everything else mechanical in a whole new way.

Download for Windows »

[leapmotion]

How to Hit the Slopes with Google Earth

When the 2014 Winter Olympics end tomorrow, where will you get your late night curling fix? Easy: Google Earth + Leap Motion. The folks over at MyReadingMapped have created a detailed digital tour of the icy alpine ski and bobsled venues of Sochi, so you can soar above the Men’s and Women’s Downhill and skate through the air with your hands.

Ready to fly? If you haven’t already, get the app, enable 3D interaction, then download and open this KML file to be automatically transported straight to the heart of the Olympic Village. From Bolshoy Ice Dome to the Iceberg Skating Palace, you’ll be able to revisit all of your favorite venues without checking into a single hotel.

Bon Voyage! We encourage you to tweet @LeapMotion with screenshots of your travels.

Olympics rings image courtesy of Atos International.

[leapmotion]

Local Access Memories: How the LAN Party is Making a Comeback

In the olden days, before the rise of high-speed Internet, LAN parties were the best way to bring PC gamers together. Now, as gamers tire of being cursed out by foul-mouthed 12-year-olds, LAN parties are making a comeback. Fighting for glory and prizes, they come together under the same roof, often for days at a stretch.

Last month, hundreds of gamers converged on the wired cavern of Baselan 26 in Winnipeg for the thrill of digital competition. Amidst tournaments including StarCraft 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Minecraft “hunger games,” and a retro Super Smash Bros. throwdown, players also reached into tech demos like the Oculus Rift and Leap Motion Controller.

Naturally, things quickly became competitive, with players vying for supremacy in Vitrun Air – a time-driven platformer that lets you pilot a sphere past obstacles and enemies:

Organized by AYBOnline, one of the largest gaming organizations in Canada, BaseLAN brings together gamers from across the country. Recently, we caught up with the organizers to find out how it went.

For a large-scale LAN party, Vitrun Air’s simplicity was its strength. While many games in the Airspace Store involve complex goals or unique gameplay mechanics, Vitrun Air riffs on a classic format – getting a ball across a platform to reach an objective. It’s a race against time.

“Once people played around for a few minutes, they were challenging each other to see who could beat the same level faster,” says Aaron Kostuik, one of the event organizers. The atmosphere completely opened up – cheering each other, laughing at missteps, or just goofing around in general.”

“With the Leap Motion Controller, they could not only beat their opponent on a computer-based level, but intriguingly, on a physical level as well.” Aaron anticipates future events where 3D interaction could be combined with virtual reality or multiplayer competitions with driving sims or first-person shooters. In fact, AYBOnline has a lot to look forward to – their next BaseLAN event will be taking place at Central Canada Comic Con, which attracts over 40,000 people each year.

Do you have any fond memories of LAN partying? Which games would you take into one – the multiplayer base-capturing Volantes, anarchic wall-smasher Boom Ball, or something else altogether? If you’re playing Leap Motion games at a party, we’d love to hear about it. Let us know in the comments or hit us up on Facebook and Twitter.

[leapmotion]

4 New Airspace Games, Social Cityscapes, and More

Every day, we’re surrounded by invisible connections that create an alternate landscape of data highs and lows. This week in Airspace, reach into five invisible cities around the world and watch the terrain warp over time. Plus, four new games, a musical journey through the stars, and an app to help you hand-eye coordination.

Jack Lumber

Got an axe to grind? His granny was killed by trees, and now Jack Lumber is out for revenge. Slice logs and massacre the forest with Jack's supernatural lumberjack powers and razor-sharp wit. Drink magical syrups to gain power and muscle your way through skill and logic puzzles.

Download for Mac and Windows »

Jumping Line

Now that’s a game trailer! Created by one of the youngest developers in Airspace, Jumping Line is a minimalistic jump ’n’ run game. Guide your bouncing line through hundreds of levels, or create your own challenges with the level editor.

Download for Mac and Windows »

Invisible Cities

What will you discover in the data? Dive into the digital landscape around you with Invisible Cities, a social network map that pulls geocoded data from Twitter and Instagram. Activity happening in real time appears as individual markers, while aggregate activity over the last 24 hours creates the underlying terrain – with hills and valleys of data ebbs and flows.

Download free for Mac »

MusicalMe Motion

Conduct your own musical journey through the stars. With MusicalMe Motion, each finger controls a unique note, so you can create chords with your hands as the universe responds to the music by changing colors.

Download for Mac »

SodaSurfer

Soar into space with a fully carbonated superhero. Shake a soda bottle to maximum pressure and fire Mr. Soda into the air to defeat the evil Dr. Bitter and his ray machine. Keep your balance, dodge obstacles, and grab powerups on your way to the top.

Download for Mac »

Flappy Rocket

Flap, don’t tap. Wave your hands and fly through the skies in Flow Studios’ riff on a popular mobile game. Flappy Rocket takes you on a side-scrolling adventure through narrow gaps between columns.

Download for Mac and Windows »

Hand Eye Coordination

It does exactly what it says on the tin. Move a red dot around the screen to overlap a target dot in this experimental free app, designed to help you improve... well, you can probably guess! Compete with your friends for the highest score.

Download free for Mac »