[rywang]

It's indeed similar, but we think there are three important differences.

Because our cameras are top mounted, our system is more comfortable / ergonomic. You don't have to lift your hands very high to interact, and your arms are always supported comfortably by the desk. We can enable convenient interactions right above the keyboard or even turn the desk itself into a touchscreen. Basically, our system is designed to be comfortable enough to use all day.

The second difference is more speculative, because it's hard to tell exactly what the Leap can or cannot do based off their video. Our system captures the entire hand rather than just the finger tips. This lets you use more natural gestures. For example, you can spin a virtual object by rotating your hand as if you were holding it (like in the sword-waving example in our video).

Finally, we're starting with commodity hardware you can get at immediately. It may look a little clunky right now, but we're experimenting with different cameras and different frames right now. Further down the road, it'll be a monitor / laptop clip-on or even built-in. Today, we're just releasing an SDK to let developers get started.

Thanks for the feedback! All of us at 3Gear spend more time than we should reading HN.

[geuis]

I know from certain sources that the next Kinect version is going to be at least as accurate as the Leap and probably moreso. Curious if your project will adapt to providing a Mac/Linux compatible API layer for the new hardware.

[rywang]

We're looking forward to working with all the new 3D camera technology coming down the pipe, and as soon as we have the resources to do so, we'll start supporting Mac and Linux too.

[exolab]

Could you be a little more precise?