During last month's CES, we happened upon a jerry-rigged set up from Razer OSVR that combined the Oculus Rift and the Leap Motion, an interesting, albeit clunky virtual reality gaming interface experiment.
Now a Michigan-based company called Aesthetic Interactive has put together a similar virtual reality dynamic using the two devices that offers a much slicker interface and a lot more control called Hovercast.
[seealso slug="virtual-reality-ces-2015"]
Aside from a slicker look, Hovercast is also meant to be a platform of sorts, allowing anyone to develop a customizable menu interface for virtual reality environments.
Of course, to get it to work you'll need the Oculus Rift and a Leap Motion, but once you have those, the developers say the interface provides proximity-based item selection, button and slider options and hierarchical menu navigation.
Unlike the Razer OSVR construct, we haven't had a chance to experiment with Hovercast, so it remains to be seen whether or not the interface is as responsive and smooth as the video demonstration.
But even without putting the interface to the test, the fact that more companies are taking the initiative to combine the Oculus Rift with the gesture capabilities of the Leap Motion is another indication that the next step in virtual reality adoption is beyond mere visual immersion. Developers are planning to get our bodies to fully interact with these virtual environments.
It's not the Star Trek holodeck just yet, but you can start getting excited.