Actually this has problem has been solved and is used daily by millions of deaf people for decades... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sign_Language

Yup. ASL uses a pretty large amount of space and it's not clear to me that this thing can resolve every gesture. For instance, what happens when one hand occludes another from the Leap's perspective? Can it know that my thumb is up if the rest of my hand is hiding it?

But we can imagine a kind of ASL shorthand, like the original Palm Pilot's 'Graffiti'. Or, maybe if you buy two or three, you can set them up to combine perspectives, giving them more insight into the full 3d space.

That could be useful to deaf people and maybe could also serve as a new form of shorthand for people who are writing long texts on devices without keyboards.

From the "About" page:

You can even network more than one Leap device, to create even larger interaction areas.

I imagine two units orthogonal to each other might be enough to capture ASL.

Writing in air is flashier for press videos, but we understand this bit well. We can track your pen as you write on normal paper too. We'll post a video of this sometime shortly.

-Chris

You're right. I just tried it (not with the leap hardware) - the inability to "lift up" off the paper without leaving the sensor zone is weird. No haptic feedback when you're on the "paper" and not.

How about writing in the large - I am thinking big movements, like when writing on a marker board?

Still need to lift the marker to separate the words. And to touch it back rather precisely so not to have the next word to be an inch below the first one.

ain't feedback a relic of all 'press-double-hard-to-be-sure' buttons? With handwriting recognition it shouldn't be that hard. also, http://madebymany.com/blog/wizards-and-haptic-gestures

A Bluetooth 'dumb' stylus with a button or slide sensor could give a pretty convincing airbrush effect in a paint app.

I don't see traditional writing being a realistic application, though perhaps cursive signatures could work.

It hasn't been demoed but if you put the device on its side it allows you to write on the table (or paper) with the same result.