This Thursday 5/23 at 20h00 GMT we will be having a Scientist Chat in with our Baker Lab scientists! A transcript will be available on the site after the event.

If you need help getting into #global chat, check out this helpful guide for assistance.

Thanks and we'll see you there!
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Edit: Switched timing to GMT.

(Tue, 05/21/2013 - 17:44  |  2 comments)

Greetings everyone!

As I mentioned yesterday we are officially announcing a new version of Foldit for use with Leap Motion! One of our devs working on the project, Dun-Yu, answered some questions about the release.

How close are we to releasing Foldit for Leap?
We plan to release it in the next month or so.

What's different about Foldit for Leap?
It provides an opportunity to get closer to the true hand folding experience. You can manipulate the 3d geometry of the protein with your fingers and drag it to a true 3d position. You can essentially twist and move the protein as if you were manipulating it with your own hands. Like a real world object.

How long has the team been working on this?
Since last Fall.

What types of players might be interested in this?
People who like hand folding for example. It gives you better control when playing. For example, you don’t need to do so many camera rotations to position the protein. It's all pretty intuitive.

What’s the difference between Foldit for Leap and Foldit for Kinect?
Kinect allows multiple people to play the same protein but Leap caters to a one player experience. It's more precise and to top if off, you don’t need a big workspace. You are working very close to the screen (and your protein structure physically). You're using your hands instead of your whole body. With the Kinect you have to play at a distance of 2-3 meters from the protein itself, but with Leap you can get right up close to the protein. I have a video of some Leap gameplay from last year when we first started working on it that people might be interested in seeing.

What's also cool is that you can point your finger at the screen to make mouse clicks. Just another cool gesture for controlling the game.

What's required for the Leap version?
You'd just need to purchase the Leap camera, install their drivers, and run the Leap version of Foldit which will be coming out soon.

What has been the most difficult part of designing this new version?
It’s all about working through human interaction. For example, if I'm thinking about working in a pinch gesture, everyone pinches in slightly different ways. We are using a vision based method to track human gestures, and it’s a big task to accommodate all kinds of human gestures. Optimizing detection for everyone is never easy, but getting it to work is really rewarding.

Any last features that you think players will be excited to hear about?
We have some cool extra tools for Leap like the pin tool. It lets you pin part of the protein structure to the workspace and move the rest of the structure around it. Kind of like freezing sections but more handy when using your fingers to manipulate the structures.

Thanks, everyone! If you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments.

- katfish

( Posted by  katfish 135 1899  |  Thu, 05/09/2013 - 17:18  |  9 comments )