Leap Motion reveals open-source North Star AR headset

Leap Motion has revealed what it calls Project North Star, an experimental augmented reality headset that offers built-in, controller-free hand tracking.

But while the company hasn't mentioned if they plan to release and sell the headset themselves, Leap Motion has announced that it plans to open source both the hardware and its related software in the coming week with the hope that developers will use the new tech to experiment and inspire new discoveries in AR.

In a blog post, Leap Motion co-founder David Holz further explains that it’s the company’s hope that releasing the project as open source will help nudge devs toward creating a new generation of AR systems and experiences and "shift the conversation from what an AR system should look like to what an AR experience should feel like."

The headset itself boasts two 1600x1440 displays with a visual field over 100 degrees in diameter that pushes 120 frames per second. All in all, Holz says that the “fundamentally simple” headset can be produced for under $100 at scale, something he believes will help make AR available and accessible to a wide audience of developers and potential AR users alike.

While North Star won’t see its open-source release until next week, Leap Motion is releasing a number of blog posts before then that dig further into the technology’s potential and its creation. Developers curious about the hardware itself, for example, can find a very in-depth breakdown of how the headset evolved from an early, bulky prototype to the version Leap Motion is showing off online today over on the Leap Motion blog.