Oculus and Leap Motion COLLIDE

This week Britelite developers sat down to test Collider, a colorful, new, funk-infused, Oculus Rift application that takes you on a futuristic audio/visual roller coaster ride.

Besides its eye popping visual style and original downtempo soundtrack produced by Baiyon, Collider is one of the first pieces of software to be released that makes full use of the new Leap Motion mounting kit for Oculus Rift . We were eager to see how well early implementations of the kit performed.

BLI is particularly fond of the intersections between visual design, interactive technology, and music so we couldn’t wait to demo this colorful joyride firsthand. Collider markets itself as an audiovisual experience that uses 3D motion detection to dynamically control real-time sound and visuals within a psychedelic virtual-reality supercollider. Whoa!

While we weren't exactly sure what the goal or function of this app was initially, everyone surrendered immediately to the vibrancy of Collider's color palette and it's bold yet minimalist style. After a minute we started to discover how the Leap device played into the experience: exposing our palms would create orbs which would change the scene, facing hands toward each other would manifest a swirling ball with orbiting rings, and pinching the air would control some sort of futuristic slingshot. Changing scenes queued more arpeggiated synths and added complexity to the rhythm while the ornamentation of the environment would pulse and ripple in time with the beat. Occasionally we travelled climactically through the all seeing cosmic eye!

The experience was visually stimulating but admittedly difficult to understand and navigate. As first time users we struggled with the program’s gesture commands and wished we had more influence over the musical layers. The distinctive style of the visual elements gelled nicely with Baiyon’s production and our overall experience was like being partially submerged in a virtual reality music video.

At the end of the day we felt that the application was quite immersive and well worth a demonstration, if you get an opportunity to try it out. It's rich, upbeat style made up for some of its cryptic functionality, but we’re sure we’ll see bigger and better versions of Collider as the Leap and Oculus technologies mature.

Written by Ryan Lotz

Collider was developed by Funktronic Labs and is available for free through Leap Motion Airspace