Leap Motion Development Essentials

Leverage the power of Leap Motion to develop and deploy a fully interactive application

Overview

• Comprehensive and thorough coverage of many SDK features
• Intelligent usage of gesture interfaces
• In-depth, functional examples of API usage explained in detail

In Detail

Leap Motion is a company developing advanced motion sensing technology for human-computer interaction. Originally inspired by the level of difficulty of using a mouse and keyboard for 3D modeling, Leap Motion believe that moulding virtual clay should be as easy as moulding clay in your hands. Leap Motion now focus on bringing this motion sensing technology closer to the real world.

Leap Motion Development Essentials explains the concepts and practical applications of gesture input for developers who want to take full advantage of Leap Motion technology. This guide explores the capabilities available to developers and gives you a clear overview of topics related to gesture input along with usable code samples.

Leap Motion Development Essentials shows you everything you need to know about the Leap Motion SDK, from creating a working program with gesture input to more sophisticated applications covering a range of relevant topics. Sample code is provided and explained along with details of the most important and central API concepts.

This book teaches you the essential information you need to design a gesture-enabled interface for your application, from specific gesture detection to best practices for this new input. You will be given guidance on practical considerations along with copious runnable demonstrations of API usage which are explained in step-by-step, reusable recipes.

What you will learn from this book

• Read finger and hand positions as well as motion information
• Detect where a user is pointing on a screen
• Recognize gestures – both built-in and user-defined
• Deal with multithreaded programming challenges to create responsive interfaces
• Explore the theory and concepts of gestural interfaces along with best practices
• Integrate the Leap with 3D web capabilities using WebGL and Three.js
• Understand the detailed coverage of C++ and JavaScript APIs
• Add Leap support to a web page with no additional software or downloads required by users

Approach

This book is a fast-paced guide with practical examples that aims to help you understand and master the Leap Motion SDK.

Who this book is written for

This book is for developers who are either involved in game development or who are looking to utilize Leap Motion technology in order to create brand new user interaction experiences to distinguish their products from the mass market. You should be comfortable with high-level languages and object-oriented development concepts in order to get the most out of this book.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Leap Motion SDK – A Quick Start
Chapter 2: Real Talk – Real Time
Chapter 3: Actual Gestures
Chapter 4: Leap and the Web
Chapter 5: HTML5 Antics in 3D