As I said I believe Facebook, Google, and Apple all have this tech on the far side of their roadmaps. So I don’t see all three failing.
But even if they do, the Leap Motion roadmap points there, and... while Leap is obviously mismanaged, new parent company is UltraHaptics. Hopefully they can get Leap into a headset....
Regardless, the Leap founder (Ed: David Holz) knows exactly what’s necessary for telepresence in VR, and I don’t think any amount of mismanagement will stop him from executing it EVENTUALLY.
But he’ll take 10 years, and Facebook might do it in 3. Apple could roll it out next year for all we know. They’ve prototyped all the tech already in ARKit.
David if you’re in this thread and you want to build a leap headset email me. We can just disassemble Oculus Go’s and add a Leap and... well you wrote the 6DOF code already right? Solder a coprocessor on the board that can do it without any battery drain. Maybe we have to design one, IDK. Sacrifice a kitten. Hire a stats PhD and make it “stochastic”. Put a neural net processor between the cameras and the computer. Who knows.
Then ship it with a Nintendo 64 emulator ONLY, that’s the entire OS, no games you have to sideload them. And mark it up to $999. Fund the company on preorders.
Needs IPD adjust, off ear audio
You would still benefit from having a point location in the meeting room. That’s one of the basic improvements VR gives you over videoconferencing. Maybe two floating eyes (for gaze direction and eye contact) plus some canned emoji-style gestures?
My point is you, as a person for whom current gen VR is enough—no eye or body tracking needed—are atypical. Most workers need body language and eye contact to communicate effectively.
I have seen a few headsets with downward facing cameras but not many. There are hard problems around both technologies so they are mostly research prototypes at this point I think, not consumer alphas.