Hi all,
Has anyone succeeded in configuring Leap Motion/Orion for use with DCS? It works okay with Flight Simulator X, but would love it in DCS.
I see a lot of threads and posts in the ED forums regarding this , and have not seen a single post claiming success .
I stumbled across this video on Youtube which shows that the old Leap Motion tech maybe still has some use in DCS.
DCS and hand tracking: tutorial and review (Leap Motion)
Now, letās see if I can get my hands on a cheap Leap Motion controllerā¦
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That looked a whole lot more stable than it used toā¦ Cool!
Yeah, I use an old leap motion like this.
Itās got a lot less easy to use now the throttle and stick are āgrabā enabled. Basically it will give priority to the VR controller over the physical hotas, so if youāve got your cockpit set up with the controls in the ārightā place then it can be unusable. Iāve bugged it on the forums and asked for an option to disable the VR flight controls, but nothing yet.
Iām using the leap motion with a wrapper to pretend to be Vive controllers in SteamVR, using SDrawās fork of the Driver_Leap plugin:
Driver_Leap on Github
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Also - while you can āpushā buttons, Iāve bound left and right mouse to buttons on my stick. You basically point at the control you want and left or right click it. It sounds unintuitive, but when it works itās way better and more direct than using the mouse. Some controls in some planes are too small or have the active areas in weird places, but theyāre getting better as the years go on.
The problem with just āpushingā controls is you wonāt always get the motion (left or right click) that you expect. Not a problem for toggles, not good for dials.
Youāll need the point and click action to select radio menu options at the very least.
I think this could be so much better if it had native leap interface rather than the wrapper pretending to be a Vive controllerā¦
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Maybe the option to switch the Leap Motion controls on and off (by clicking a button on the HOTAS?) would provide a better working solution (as was already mentioned in the video).
I do not know whether that is possible.
Tonight I am picking up a cheap used Leap Motion Controller so I can start to experiment with it!
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Possibly - I havenāt tried it!
That sounds similar to the way I handled mouse interactions prior to getting VR, I think, and it was intuitive fairly quickly.
āNormalā setting, mouse is a free-look control, with no ability to interface with the cockpit. āMiddle Mouse Buttonā engages āClickable Cockpit Modeā. That meant free look was no longer available, but knobs, switches and in particular doohickeys were manipulable.
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I see a new sensor has been released. I was going to buy it, but at Ā£139 decided Iād wait for otherās flight sim results - if anyone bothers now, with headset hand tracking now seeming to be the preferred alternative.
*Note which headset is used in the example photoās 
Not a ringing endorsement for their hand tracking (which Iāve not yet tried)
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Interesting.
I got the LeapMotion sensor on a sale and tried it. It was really cool to see my hands in DCS, but the gestures didnāt work very well, especially when looking down in the cockpit. I guess the background got cluttered by legs, joystick, etc.
It worked really well when punching buttons on the up front controller in the F-16 and F-18 though. Problem was that the virtual hands continued to hit virtual switches when I held onto the HOTAS or used other physical controllers, so I couldnāt just use it for some parts of the cockpitā¦
If you want to try it, Iāll send it to you for free.
Thanks Troll, but that isnāt necessary - I have one myself. Iāve had it for years. I bought one originally at normal price but wasnāt overly impressed at the time. This was quite early on when it had just become known. I returned it for a refund, but a couple of years later the stock was being sold off at silly low prices - probably when you got yours, too, so I thought Iād pick one up again and just wait and see.
Iāve watched quite a few videos of people testing the hand tracking with LM in DCS and did have a quick go for a short while, but had poor results. Since then itās sat on my desk here, waiting for me to make more of an effort with it. As Iām not flying much right now, itās gathering dust! Just thought maybe the new one would up the ante. Iāll wait and see this time, with the current price as it is.
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Ah! I see what you meant by ātheir handtrackingā now. The headset, not LeapMotion 
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i was about to hit the buy button, but then I decided to wait too!.
I have the gen1 and in DCS I found it mind-blowing and disappointing at the same time!
When it works itās an incredible feeling even if you donāt have the "hapticĀ£ feedback of touching a real object.
When it doesnāt work and you have to try the same gesture three time to have the desired action is a mess.
I think higher resolution and field of view could help a little, but most of all I think it will need a lot of more software work on DCS part. This usually requires 2 weeks (flight sim developer time = between 6 months and 3 years real time)!
Optionally therās increasing support for OpenXr and OpenXr toolkit already recognize the hands well in leap motion. (you see the arm digital bones and not the fancy DCS pilot gloves) But I think youāll need to remap all the gestures for DCSā¦
Never tried itā¦
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It actually works very well in FSX and P3D with FlyInside. I donāt use it because I didnāt like the various gestures to control things and I often found my hardware (including my desk) was in the way when I reached out to press/flip things.
I remember back then (2016/17) we were all impressed with it and saying how in a couple of years everything would be so much better with hands in VR.