Leap Motion’s VR anatomy lesson lets you pull a cat apart with your hands

Leap Motion has released a demo for a new kind of VR experience called “Cat Explorer.” It’s basically exactly what it sounds like — you “explore” the muscles, organs, and skeleton of an adorable kitty using just your hands.

Here’s what it looks like in action:

Leap Motion’s description of the video says:

Cat Explorer is a fun demo that points to the transformative potential of VR and natural interaction in fields as diverse as education, training, healthcare, and entertainment.

The company created the demo to show off the most recent version of the Orion hand-tracking software — which is quite something to watch.

Admittedly, the initial moment where you see what the demo is about is a little shocking. The natural inclination when you see a cat staring at you is to try and pet it. When you do, your virtual hand goes right through the cat’s skin and into its organs.

But once you get past that, you can appreciate the controls. You can spin the cat around, “cut” sections of it up to explore individually, or even pull the whole thing apart to look at it more closely.

According to Leap Motion’s site, there are no instructions:

Instead of learning how to use a controller, Cat Explorer encourages you to learn through play and experimentation. With no instructions, previous experience or training, people can dive into the space and quickly understand what to do.

The demo does serve an educational purpose as well — it’s basically a more in-depth version of that plastic human doll you open up to see its little plastic organs inside. Only in this case, it’s an adorable cat — though the way its eyes follow you around with that judging expression is a little disconcerting.

The demo works with Vive and Oculus, and is free to download from Leap Motion’s site.

via Polygon