????我中槍了。我在桌子上朝空氣又抓又砸又戳地比劃了八秒鐘，弗蘭克?威爾提終于掏出手槍把我干掉了。幸好這只是一場游戲，但是我卻連一點取勝的機會都沒有。我的槍——在這場游戲中就是我的食指，一整天都沒有擊中任何東西。

????這款射擊游戲Fast Iron》只是最近上市的Leap Motion體感控制器的眾多游戲應(yīng)用里的一款。Leap Motion是一種可以讓用戶通過手勢控制電腦的外圍設(shè)備.2012年5月，它剛剛發(fā)布的時候，的確帶給人很多期待。現(xiàn)在一年多過去了，這款79美元的設(shè)備也終于正式投放市場。試用一周之后，以它目前的情況看，這種體感控制技術(shù)倒是說不出有什么問題。

????安裝Leap Motion體感控制器的過程出乎意料地簡單。我還以為必須得把這個體感控制器放在離屏幕一定距離的地方才行，要么就是必須得把這款設(shè)備放在一定的高度上，但事實證明這些都沒必要。而且也不必下載額外的軟件，算是一款即插即玩型的設(shè)備，我通過一個USB接口就把它連接到了我的Mac上。

????安裝Leap Motion的軟件也沒什么難度，而且給人的感覺就是手勢控制似乎很好掌握，似乎傳感器可以很清楚地捕捉每個手指的運動。但是軟件的完善程度很不夠，讓我大跌眼鏡——在我的Mac上運行的時候，它的全屏功能自行調(diào)節(jié)了所有其它應(yīng)用窗口的大小，這一點非常討厭。而且圖像也不太穩(wěn)定，感覺就像分辨率很低一樣。想到這里，我心煩地擺了擺手，但是這款設(shè)備卻沒有探測到這個動作。事后來看，這說明它靈敏度欠缺。這個缺點可能會影響我對這款體感控制器的體驗。

????比如說，就在我選擇能與這款設(shè)備兼容的軟件的時候，我發(fā)現(xiàn)圖像效果不佳反倒成了這款設(shè)備最小的問題。這款設(shè)備有一個專門的Airspace Store網(wǎng)絡(luò)商城，主要銷售各種第三方開發(fā)者針對這款設(shè)備開發(fā)的軟件。其中有免費的也有付費的，既可用于蘋果的Mac，也可用于普通PC。它們大部分是游戲，但也有一些學(xué)習(xí)和工作軟件，表明了Leap Motion體感控制器能夠用于哪些用途。

????我嘗試的第一個軟件叫Swoosh。在打開這個程序之后，我的電腦完全亂套了，就好像我在用Leap Motion打太極一樣。與此同時，我的iTunes突然神秘地開始播放我的影音庫里的第一個電影【如果你一定想知道是什么電影的話，告訴你吧，是《王牌播音員》（Anchorman）】。然后Swoosh 的音樂也響了起來。我每次在Swoosh上打開一個第三方影音文件都會出現(xiàn)這種問題。后來我才明白問題出在哪。Swoosh是一款DJ應(yīng)用，可以播放用戶的iTunes里的音樂，用戶可以用手勢“轉(zhuǎn)唱片”、“打碟”。但在我搞懂這個問題之前又出現(xiàn)了另一個問題，那就是找不到這款應(yīng)用的全屏窗口了，它不知道為什么被最小化了。后來我終于成功地把影音庫里的一首歌導(dǎo)到了這款軟件里，但是它對我的手勢要么毫無反應(yīng)，要么就是給出讓人意外的反應(yīng)。我沒辦法，只好舉手投降。

????He shot me. After a good eight seconds of flailing, grabbing, and poking at the air above my desk, Frank Welty finally unholstered his sidearm and put me out of my misery. Alas, it was only a game, but I never really stood a chance. My shooter, which in this case was my pointer finger, hadn't hit a damn thing all day.

????The game, Fast Iron, is just one of dozens of apps available for the newly launched Leap Motion Controller. A peripheral that lets users control their computer through hand gestures, this device showed plenty of promise when it was announced in May 2012. Now, more than a year later, the $79 product has come to market, and after a week of feeling it out, it's hard to point a finger at what exactly is wrong with gesture-based computing, at least in its current state.

????Setting up the Leap Motion Controller was unexpectedly easy. I had imagined having to input measurements like the controller's distance to the screen, or heeding requirements like keeping the device at a certain height, but none of that was necessary. Other than downloading a software suite, the peripheral was more-or-less plug-and-play, the unit powered and connected to my Mac via a USB cable.

????The Leap Motion software involved minimal hand-holding, and gave the impression that gesture-based controls would be easy to master, with the sensor seeming to pick up each finger and hand rotation cleanly. But the program's lack of finish caught my eye -- running on my Mac, the software's full-screen capability resized all my other applications windows (a huge annoyance), and its graphics looked choppy, almost like they were low-resolution. The device couldn't detect my hands shaking with worry over these concerns, but in hindsight, they were clear indicators of a lack of finish that would plague my experience with the controller.

????For example, as I continued pawing through the device's compatible software, poor graphics soon became the least of Leap Motion's problems. The company's Airspace Store, a proprietary app marketplace that sells third-party created software for the device, offers users a mix of free and paid apps for both Macs and PCs. The selection is mostly games, but there are learning and productivity titles already in the mix that show the range of what the Leap Motion Controller can do.

????The first app I tried out was Swoosh. Upon launching the program, my computer totally freaked out, as if I was using the Leap to shadow box. At the same time, iTunes mysteriously launched and started playing the first movie file in my library (Anchorman, if you must know), blasting Swoosh's music over the video. This happened every time I launched the third-party title, until finally I figured out the problem. Swoosh is a deejaying app that plays music from your iTunes library, and users can "spin" and "scratch" the tracks like a record with the Leap Motion Controller. I only discovered this after locating the app's missing full-screen window, which for some unknown reason had been minimized. And when I finally loaded a song from my library into the software, the controls were unresponsive and unpredictable. I couldn't do much of anything with it, except for throw my hands up and walk away.