No Gravity Natural User Interface
Description
NoGravity is a game where you fly a spacecraft and protect the mothership from attacks. Traditionally you play the game with keyboard or a gamepad.
I created this natural user interface to give an immersive experience to the user. The user doesn't need any controller, instead the user's hands become the controller. As the user rotates the hand left, right, up, or down, the plane's direction can be manipulated. Using the thumb, the user can shoot asteroids and other ships. To make this interaction possible, Leap Motion controller is used.
This is a beginning to an interface where the user will be the part of the interface instead of being detached from the interface.
In the next iteration, this game is will be modified to be played in Virtual Reality using the Oculus Rift headset to give the user a completely immersive system. When that is done, you will feel as if you are actually flying a spacecraft.
Design Considerations and Lessons Learned
The interface using the kinect is lagging, but it definitely involves the movement of the entire body to control the space ship which make the interaction more fun.
The interface using the interface of Leap Motion is easy to use and very fluid due to the low latency of the device. For navigating the spaceship, turning the hand over the Leap Motion feels more natural.
If you are playing the game in front of a big screen kinect feels more immersive, but for something like a display of a laptop, Leap Motion can be the right interface device.
Trigger for firing the gun using the Leap Motion is bringing the thumb near the hand, but having a physical button to shoot is feels more natural.
My Contribution
Created two functional prototypes using the Leap Motion sensor, the Microsoft Kinect sensor and visual C#, did user testing, and then iterated on the final interface using Leap Motion which was more intuitive and easy to use.