Leap Motion lets Oculus users switch between VR and reality
Picture the scene: You're watching a documentary with an Oculus Rift headset, when suddenly you need a drink or receive a text. You have to stop the film, rip off the goggles and give your eyes a second to adjust, only to reverse the entire process when you're done a few moments later. Leap Motion, the hand-tracking accessory that can be used in parallel with Oculus VR hardware, has a solution. A new 'Quick Switch' demo lets you alternate between VR and a video passthrough simply by waving your hand in front of your face. It's a quick gesture and the proximity required from the headset (between one and three inches) means you're unlikely to trigger it by mistake. The company says Quick Switch will soon be available as part of its 'Unity Core Assets: VR Edition' toolkit and could be added to any Unity app. Video passthrough is already available with Oculus VR and Samsung's new Gear VR headset, and we suspect it'll come as standard in the final Oculus Rift consumer model. In the meantime, Leap Motion's offering could prove useful, especially if you're exploring the Large Hadron Collider and accidentally knock over a mug on your coffee table.
