Leap Motion 3D Jam 2.0 Winners Announced

Leap Motion launched its second 3D Jam competition in July of 2015. Developers had until November 9 to submit their applications for the event. All of the applications that were successfully submitted were then subject to a community vote, as well as ratings from Leap Motion. The company said there were nearly 200 submitted applications, from which the top 11 were selected to win a share of the $75,000 prize pool.

Leap Motion had two different categories for the competition: the AR/VR Track, which had five winners, and two community favorites, and the Open Track, which had three winners and two community favorites.

The first place prize in the AR/VR track was awarded to Lyra VR, which lets you create music in 3D space. The developer of this application took home $10,000, a license for the Unity Suite, two OSVR hacker development kits, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 980Ti.

Second place was presented to Warlock VR. This game lets you “cast spells, shoot plasma balls, and harness cosmic power.” Warlock VR also has a multiplayer mode that lets you battle other warlocks. Leap Motion awarded the developer with $7,500, Unity Pro, a single OSV HDK, and a Geforce GTX 980Ti.

RPS Island took third place, which awarded the dev with $5,000, a copy of Unity Pro, an OSVR HDK, and a GTX 980Ti. RPS Island is a game that revolves around rock-paper-scissors and pits you against “a never-ending onslaught of enemies” that you need to defeat by playing the classic game.

The fourth place prize went to Vox Rocks Dino Destroyer. Leap Motion described this game as a “shooting-gallery-slash-puzzle game.” The game has you manipulating magnetic forces to kill dinosaurs. The fourth place prize was $2,500, a copy of Unity Pro, and an OSVR HDK.

Fifth place went to HellVibe, a puzzle game inspired by Hellraiser and Myst. The developer was given $1,000, Unity Pro and an OSVR HDK.

The two community choice winners were both awarded $500 and a copy of Unity Pro. These were PotelRVR, which is exactly what it sounds like -- a pottery-making game for VR -- and Virtual Real Meeting, which is virtual meeting space that lets you share videos, slideshows, and other media forms with other participants.

In the Open Track, which encompassed any submission that didn’t revolve around VR, there were three winners and a single community choice award.

First place went to Spiders of Mars, which pits you against never-ending waves of robot spiders. The developers take home the same prize package as the first place winner in the AR/VR Track. Leap Motion awarded the developers of Spiders of Mars with $10,000, Unity Suite and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 980Ti.

Second place was given to Zombies Shall Not Pass, a game that places you as a zombie that is out to get the last survivors of the human race. Leap Motion gave the developers from this game $7,500, Unity Pro and a GeForce GTX 980Tis.

Hand Capture, a motion capture and animation plugin for Autodesk MotionBuilder 2016, took home the third place prize -- $5,000, Unity Pro and a GeForce GTX 980Ti.

The community favorite for this category goes to Universal Accessibility Vehicle (UAV). This application is an experimental interface to control household appliances using a Leap Motion sensor attached to a wheelchair. The developer took home $500 and a copy of Unity Pro.

Follow Kevin Carbotte @pumcypuhoy. Follow us on Facebook, Google+, RSS, Twitter and YouTube

 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years.