After Leap Motion's somewhat disappointing debut,
you'd be forgiving for wanting to wave off the idea of third-party
gesture control peripherals. But wait! Unlike Leap, Reactiv isn't trying
to revolutionize human-computer interactions with its Touch+
controller—there's no wizard-like finger waggling or Minority Report-style hand waving here. Instead, the Touch+'s dual cameras turn any surface into multi-touch input device.
Touch+ was born out of Haptix,
a Kickstarter project that raised more than $180,000 from backers. Over
the past year, Reactiv refined the Haptix vision to eventually become
Touch+.
While Touch+ certainly won't be for everyone, Reactiv is positioning the
multitouch PC controller as more than a mere tool for games and art
projects. The video above shows the device being used in an office
meeting, acting as a cursor control for a businessman's laptop before
being repositioned on the fly to point at a projected display, instantly
allowing the man to reach up with his hands to circle objects on the
image.
What's more, PCWorld sister site CITEWorld managed to snag a live demo with Touch+,
and the founders focused on the potential productivity uses of the
device: Enabling mouse-free control of Excel and PowerPoint, naturally
manipulating pictures in PhotoShop, creating designs in CAD, the
aforementioned presentation capabilities, and so forth.
The Touch+ motion controller connected to the top of a notebook.
The Touch+ works with Windows PCs or Macs, connecting via USB 2.0 or
3.0. If you choose to point it at your keyboard, the device will
temporarily suspend its multitouch capabilities while you type, then
resume when your fingers stop bobbing up and down.
Sound interesting? An alpha version of Touch+ is available now on the Reactiv website
for $75. Until we get our own hands on the device, however, we won't
know for sure how the device stacks up to competitors like the Leap
Motion.