The criticisms of tracked hand motion are spot on, at least with regards to the Leap Motion device. But even if the controller were to work well, having no feedback makes actually interacting with the environment extremely difficult.<p>So I hacked together a haptic glove out of an Arduino, a few vibrating motors, and a WebSocket-to-Serial-Port bridging program in a weekend. Took it to National Maker Faire and demoed it to a few hundred people. There were only a handful of skeptics, and of them, only two of them walked away unconvinced. Even basic haptics has a huge impact on the believability of the motion interaction.
Was I the only one disappointed to hear that the knife couldn't be used as a screwdriver? I would think that a game designer would be excited to allow the pocket knife to be used as a separate, emergent solution to the puzzle. Don't give the player a tool and then tell them it doesn't work. That's not immersion, it's a tease.
I liked "Fail Fast, and Follow the Fun" and emphasis on immersion.<p>But this article, like Carmack's pro-VR article, convinced me that VR isn't ready. Before it was unacceptable latency for some motions; now it's motion sickness.<p>But these are clever guys. One day it will be ready.