Leap Motion

The Leap Motion controller allows for hands and fingers to provide input to an application. With commit 27a81f9c0d the development branch now has preliminary support for this new input device.

Making Use of the Leap Motion Controller in Your Project

Before you can make use of the Leap Motion controller in Torque 3D you will need to download the Leap Motion SDK from their web site and extract it to a convenient directory. As of this writing you need to be invited into their developer program in order to gain access to their SDK.

With the SDK in place, you will need to modify your project's buildFiles/config/project.conf file in a text editor. The first step is to let Torque 3D's Project Generator know where the Leap Motion SDK is located. The easiest way to do this is to add the $LEAPMOTION_SDK_PATH global variable to the top of your project.conf file. For example:

$LEAPMOTION_SDK_PATH = "C:\Users\dwyand_2\Downloads\LeapMotion\Leap_Developer_Kit_0.7.1_Windows\Leap_SDK";

You may also create a Windows environmental variable named TORQUE_LEAPMOTION_PATH that also provides an absolute path to the Leap Motion SDK. Going this route doesn't store the path within the project.conf file, which may be required if multiple developers are working on the same project.

The second addition to your project.conf file is a reference to the Torque 3D's Project Generator module for the Leap Motion. Add the following between the Torque3D::beginConfig() and Torque3D::endConfig() lines:

    // Include Leap Motion module
    includeModule( 'leapMotion' );

Here is a complete example of a project.conf file with all of the required changes:

<?php

// Set this true to enable hifi networking instead of standard.
// In general ... hifi is designed to better deal with fast
// moving players in close proximity to each other, such as
// a racing game.
$TORQUE_HIFI_NET = false;

// Set this to true to enable the ExtendedMove class.  This
// allows the passing of absolute position and rotation input
// device information from the client to the server.
$TORQUE_EXTENDED_MOVE = true;

// Our path to the Leap Motion SDK:
$LEAPMOTION_SDK_PATH = "C:\Users\dwyand_2\Downloads\LeapMotion\Leap_Developer_Kit_0.7.1_Windows\Leap_SDK";

// Configure Torque 3D
Torque3D::beginConfig( "win32", "MarbleMotion" );

    // Include Leap Motion module
    includeModule( 'leapMotion' );
        
    // Enable for optional minidump debugging support
    // addProjectDefine( 'TORQUE_MINIDUMP' );
        
Torque3D::endConfig();

?>

With these changes in place you may run your project's generateProjects.bat file to rebuild the various Visual Studio files.

Before you may run your freshly compiled game you will need to include the appropriate Leap Motion DLLs with your game's executable. As of the Leap Motion SDK v0.7.1 these files are located in the Leap_SDK/lib/x86 directory. Specifically you should copy the Leap.dll (the release library) and Leapd.dll (the debug library) into the same directory as your game's executable. When it comes time to release your game you only need to include the 'Leap.dll' library.

Using the Leap Motion Controller

The new Torque 3D Leap Motion input device provides a number of input events that may be used with Torque 3D's action map system. There are a number of different ways to use the Leap Motion input device, which are set up using global TorqueScript variables.

Hand and Finger Input Events

Torque 3D may provide absolute position and rotation information on any hands within the Leap Motion controller's view, along with any fingers on the hands (known as pointables in the Leap Motion SDK). In order to receive these events the $LeapMotion::GenerateIndividualEvents global TorqueScript variable should be set to true (the default). The default configuration is to support up to two and and five pointables per hand. These totals may be changed in source/platform/input/leapMotion/leapMotionConstants.h.

The following action map input events are available (all rotations are in angled axis format):

Hand 1
lm_hand1 - absolute position
lm_hand1rot - absolute rotation
lm_hand1point1 - absolute finger 1 position
lm_hand1point1rot - absolute finger 1 rotation
lm_hand1point2 - absolute finger 2 position
lm_hand1point2rot - absolute finger 2 rotation
lm_hand1point3 - absolute finger 2 position
lm_hand1point3rot - absolute finger 2 rotation
lm_hand1point4 - absolute finger 2 position
lm_hand1point4rot - absolute finger 2 rotation
lm_hand1point5 - absolute finger 2 position
lm_hand1point5rot - absolute finger 2 rotation

Hand 2
lm_hand2 - absolute position
lm_hand2rot - absolute rotation
lm_hand2point1 - absolute finger 1 position
lm_hand2point1rot - absolute finger 1 rotation
lm_hand2point2 - absolute finger 2 position
lm_hand2point2rot - absolute finger 2 rotation
lm_hand2point3 - absolute finger 2 position
lm_hand2point3rot - absolute finger 2 rotation
lm_hand2point4 - absolute finger 2 position
lm_hand2point4rot - absolute finger 2 rotation
lm_hand2point5 - absolute finger 2 position
lm_hand2point5rot - absolute finger 2 rotation