Leaping around the world

My next adventure after Touchless app for Windows - flying through Google Earth with Leap Motion.

My next adventure after Touchless app for Windows was flying through Google Earth with Leap Motion.

I quickly got GE configured for 3D control and, like everyone else, promptly had the earth spinning wildly! I also kept seeing the 'dots' on the screen from Touchless, along with GE's unexplained fat and thin up/down and left/right arrows. After disabling Touchless from the system tray, the dots went away, but my control didn't improve.

The support forum FAQ article showed two distinct user populations: those that loved flying around the world via Leaping, and those who found it frustrating. Videos seemed to help many people, so I visited the company's channel (it had 13,741 subscribers as of my visit).

I found lots of videos, mostly 2 weeks to 2 months old. The initial promo video provided by the company for leaping with Google Earth was cool-looking, but only 29 seconds long, and pretty useless for helping someone learn how to fly like that: it was impossible to judge correct hand position relative to the controller because the controller wasn't visible in the video. More promising was a playlist of 40 videos on how to #LeapInto Google Earth, plus some direct video links from the support forum.

Fortunately, it became clear that some early adopters who tried it out had started documenting. Julia's #LeapInto Sweden was short but helpful. By far the most useful link I found for guidance on flying without spinning was Leap Motion - Google Earth instructions. This video showed correct hand orientation and control, and explained what the fat and skinny arrows meant and how to navigate.

With that start, within an hour I was able to navigate comfortably around the buildings of NC State Centennial Campus and around Raleigh. Relaunching it an hour later required a bit of re-learning, but I was soon able to fly around San Francisco and under the Golden Gate Bridge, just like another demo video showed. I spent another 30 min or so flying to Vatican City, Sweden, the Statue of Liberty, and some places I used to live in the US.

Now I actually feel comfortable enough to consider showing it at an internal technology demo tomorrow. I can't wait to hear what people think!

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