With over ten years of history there are now many generations of hardware products, software releases, tooling and applications in existence which can cause some confusion and questions when you are getting started with hand tracking.
This guide is designed to provide some clarity on these different generations and help you for avoid compatibility issues between different versions of hardware, software, tooling and applications.
- Leap Motion? Ultraleap? Ultrahaptics?
- API Compatibility
- OS Compatibility
- Hardware compatibility
- Programming languages support
- Game engine supports
Leap Motion? Ultraleap? Ultrahaptics? What name should I use?
Leap Motion, created in 2013, was the company that created the original Leap Motion Controller and the hand tracking software. In 2019, Leap Motion merged with Ultrahaptics, and the resulting company was renamed to Ultraleap. This article provides some more detail on this.
This guide will still refer to some software version using "Leap Motion" to remain consistent with how these are presented on the Legacy downloads page on the Ultraleap developer's website.
If you're looking for the latest version of Ultraleap's hand tracking, click on this link
API Compatibility
| Version | Leap API | LeapC API | OpenXR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leap Motion 2.x | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Leap Motion Orion 3.x | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Leap Motion Orion 4.x | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Ultraleap Gemini 5.2+ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅¹ |
| Ultraleap Hyperion | ❌ | ✅ | ✅¹ |
Operating System Compatibility
| Version | Windows | MacOS | Linux | Android (XR2 only) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leap Motion 2.x | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Leap Motion Orion 3.x | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Leap Motion Orion 4.x | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Ultraleap Gemini 5.2+ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅² |
| Ultraleap Hyperion | ✅ | ✅ | Coming soon | ✅ |
Hardware compatibility
| Version | Leap Motion Controller | SIR-170/3Di | Leap Motion Controller 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leap Motion 2.x | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Leap Motion Orion 3.x | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Leap Motion Orion 4.x | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Ultraleap Gemini 5.2+ | ✅³ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Ultraleap Hyperion | ❌ | Contact Us | ✅ |
Programming languages support
This table does not cover any community-made bindings, and only includes languages that are officially supported by Ultraleap.
Because language support is tied to which API is supported, language support is listed per API instead of per SDK version.
| Version | C/C++ | C# | Python | Java | JavaScript |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leap API | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| LeapC API | ✅ | ❌ |
✅ (via Python binding) |
❌ | ❌ |
The updated Python bindings for Gemini V5 and the LeapC API can be found here.
If you wish to use a coding language that isn't officially supported we want to hear from you, please let us know here.
Supported game engines
Leap Motion Core Assets for the legacy V2 and V3 SDKs are obsolete and not compatible with current versions of Unity. The last plugin version compatible with Orion V4 were the 4.4.0 Core Assets, these are no longer supported but can be found on GitHub if needed.
Click here for the latest releases of the Unity and Unreal plugins.
| Version | Unity | Unreal |
|---|---|---|
| Leap Motion 2.x | ❌ | ❌ |
| Leap Motion 3.x | ❌ | ❌ |
| Leap Motion 4.x | ❌ | ❌ |
| Ultraleap 5.2+ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Ultraleap Hyperion | ✅ | ✅ |
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