LeiaPix is an excellent social app, however it is severely compromised by the fact that you have to manually swipe to get to the next image. Obviously you should be able to run an automated slideshow of any specific category of image or user’s posts. It is ridiculously non-user-friendly to waste people’s time forcing them to swipe endlessly.
Is it also “ridiculously non-user-friendly” that Instagram works the same way?
I can’t think of a single social media platform for images that works the way you describe and swipes automatically for you.
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Hey Nima-
I apologize if the tone of my messages comes across as overly “critical” sometimes, but I have the most sincere of motives. I absolutely adore the Lume Pad 2 and I constantly promote it and its amazing ecosystem of 3D apps to anyone who will listen, and on Discord. You will be offended again to hear me say that some of the apps come across as a really nice “Demo” but don’t have the sort of depth, robustness and versatility that you would typically experience with a similar Windows or Android app. I feel the need to be be honest with my comments in the hope that some of them might result in improvements to the apps.
I am not interested in how other social media apps function, but I really like the idea that LeiaPix has these categories like “nature” and “art”. Somehow it just seems “logical” that you should be able to watch the wonderful 3D images in these categories in a slideshow format exactly like the wonderful LeiaFrame, where you can do other things while the slideshow runs, instead of having to constantly reach out and “swipe”. I have just assumed that you deliberately avoided the obvious slideshow option for LeiaPix because it would cause much more server usage. I know that I would use LeiaPix 100x more if it had the versatility of optional slideshows.
Speaking of slideshows, LeiaFrame currently works beautifully as a “Demo”, but for me it absolutely needs the simple versatility of having more than “one” show selection. The room I am sitting in has a bunch of monitors constantly running 2D slideshows of several hundred thousand images of Fantasy Art, Victorian Art, AI Art and video compilations. It would be really easy for you to add this multiple show feature if you appreciate the idea of having a more “versatile” app. Eventually I’d like to have several 3D slideshows running simultaneously once the price of the 3D displays comes down. Meanwhile I need to be able to switch between several different slideshows in LeiaFrame. The process of converting images to 3D in LeiaPlayer seems unnecessarily tedious since you can convert only one image at a time. It would be far more efficient if I could select a file folder containing 20,000 images, designate a depth setting for all of them, and 2 hours later all the batch-conversion was sequentially done and ready for LeiaFrame. If I later noticed that I was not happy with the depth on some of these images I would reconvert just those.
Lets talk about app “robustness” (or lack thereof). In VR I have used thousands of Sketchfab models to decorate Home spaces. I started loading these into LeiaViewer and it works beautifully as a Demo for small quantities, but I was shocked that after only about 150 models the app started crashing to the desktop when you tried to load more from Sketchfab Explorer. Randomly it would fail to even display the search keyboard and strangest of all, it would often crash into “opening” a different Leia app that had been used recently. An app like this should be able to have thousands of gltf models residing in its file library, so I assume that it currently has a problem displaying an increasing number of just the thumbnail images.
I suppose that I have offended you enough for today, but instead of being defensive, please understand that I really want to help you make your software useful to a variety of users.
–. Steve
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Hey Steve,
Thanks for the feedback. Ultimately, lots of the things you mentioned have been thought about and we didn’t implement them because it’s either not what we envision for the product, we don’t think it’s a good use of our time to develop, or we don’t believe it would be a good user experience.
If you’d like to create a more complex slideshow or model viewing app, our SDK is fully available for you to create one.
If you’d like to do bulk conversions, our cloud API is available and you can submit thousands of images to be converted if that’s what you want to do.
The goal for Lume Pad 2 and its default apps is to offer an easy experience for the average consumer. For more complex features like those you’re asking for, we’d expect creators and businesses who have those use cases to build the solution themselves.
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Nima -
Wow, I have to say that I am shocked (and frankly horrified) to hear you clarify that Leia’s actual intent with the apps is to provide only the sort of minimal functionality that you get with a glorified “Demo”. You certainly have everyone inadvertantly misled! The reviewers of the Lume Pad 2 have been universally impressed with the fact that it comes with an entire “ecosystem” or “suite” of apps to make the fabulous display multi-useful. They all foolishly assume that you will continue to improve these apps to make them more useful/versatile, and that you will add new apps to the “ecosystem”. You really need to publish disclaimers in the Leia Appstore for each of the apps, stating that no additional functionality is envisioned. Only this policy declaration will give potential developers the notice/incentive to build more complex apps. Unfortunately, since the user-base for this device is currently so small, it will be a long while before developers can justify building new apps and we users will be stuck with your simple demos. But at least we know not to expect anything new.
Meanwhile, you need to discontinue the ruse of your “Feature Requests” “Forum” where your are supposedly seriously soliciting comments for improvements, and instead make a blanket policy statement that those seeking additional functionality need to build a new app for that. Your surprising/flawed philosophy that you want only to provide “an easy experience for the average consumer” is not mutually exclusive with having an app that also has advanced/versatile features, and is completely at odds with the sort if “3D enthusiast” people who currently buy this pricey device. It is incredibly disappointing that you do not have the product-improvement goals that we all assumed you did. Thanks for your honest admission – I will stop wasting my time with suggestions for your toy that I thought was working to become a serious product.
- Steve
Hey Steve,
I was just being honest with you so you didn’t expect that features that statistically none of our customers our asking for will be made in the future. If you think there’s a demand and you have a serious business case for it, you should develop them yourself.
We will of course keep improving our product. But we’re going to build things that will benefit the largest number of users. I wouldn’t consider the features you mentioned as even being on the Top 100 list of things we should build right now. For example, the vast majority of users don’t use 3D models at all, let alone have a need to store hundreds of them on the device.
The reviewers of the Lume Pad 2 have been universally impressed with the fact that it comes with an entire “ecosystem” or “suite” of apps to make the fabulous display multi-useful.
That’s because we have made an ecosystem of apps that are multi-useful. The features you’re requesting are simply not going to benefit anyone but an incredibly tiny niche of our users. We have usage analytics on the platform, and we have data that logs all customer requests from every different channel. No one has ever asked about supporting that many 3D model files, only two others have ever asked for slideshow functionality in LeiaPix.
I don’t want you or other users to get the wrong idea: we are spending our time and energy on features that actually matter. We don’t work on things just because a single person asks for it.
This forum is useful for collecting feedback. But unless we hear the same thing ten or more times from different people on the forum, YouTube comments, helpdesk tickets, and business development conversations, it’s probably not something any valuable number of customers wants.
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Hello!, new user here. I was wondering if the implementation of a toggle for the 3D that could enable/disable it system wide (so that the all the content displayed can be made 3D as well) is possible and if its being worked on.
It’s not possible. If we could read what’s being displayed system-wide and convert it to 3D, we’d also be able to read your banking info and which websites you’re viewing and all that sort of stuff. Plus, the quality wouldn’t be that good because it would just be converting everything, including UI and buttons and text and stuff which just wouldn’t look very good.
Due to privacy reasons and quality reasons, we need apps that render to the display to use the Leia SDK and design content specifically to look good on the device, usually making sure only photos or videos are being displayed in 3D, or if it’s a game or an app ensuring they design the UI to look good too.
Features Requests and Suggestions are an interesting topic. There are a few different ways I have seen companies go about it.
Feature Voting System
They have a way to vote up certain feature requests like how Reddit works with their posts. That helps create a ranking system and helps the developers prioritize what features to work on. Nima’s point is clearly proven when no one else has requested the feature that Stephen asked about a couple of months ago. I am a heavy user of the Lumepad 2 but the 3d models feature is something I played around with for maybe 30 minutes and then never again.
Customer Care will make up an answer.
A customer service rep will have to manage calls and emails with feature requests in them without any sort of direct line to the developers. The reps can only hope their tickets are categorized properly and then viewed by the decision-makers who implement new features. They typically will have a canned response that says something like “We will forward your request over to the proper department that can review all suggestions.” Any statement of the sort is almost always written by someone who doesn’t know for sure if that is accurate and is just looking to appease a customer or a customer service rep.
Customers will get an honest answer they are not happy with.
You can have someone like Nima who is very aware of the development process and is honest about it. More or less it is a constant battle for executives and developers on how they focus their time. The consumer has no idea what new products may also be in development behind the scenes that cannot be discussed with the public yet.
Some major companies flat out refuse to listen to any feature requests.
The worst experience for the customer is how some of the biggest companies like Apple or Google are trained to handle feature suggestions. Because of past litigation, they have a team of lawyers that have written up specific verbiage that reps are supposed to read verbatim when a customer makes a feature request or suggestion. It will say something like “I can not respond to or accept your feature suggestion.” Because they have dealt with people who call in and say “I’m going to sue you because you stole my idea I gave you over the phone 10 years ago.”
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I think a lot of this can be solved if there was a way to enable VR in Chrome to use the Lume Pad stereo screen. What I am in VR on the Quest, I can use the browser to access Matterport Models and even Potree Pointclouds. A VR button shows up when I’m in the model.
If I go to these models in Chrome on the Lume Pad, the VR button comes up but when you press it a message comes up to “Install Google VR Services”. I have never got pass this point.
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Some new requests 
- 3D Video Alignment (editing) in LeiaPlayer
I think SBS and LVF video editing to align the 3D is a pretty necessary feature to have. Sometimes even after taking a video on the Lume Pad 2 with its own cameras, it doesnt come out properly aligned. Not being able to align the 3D on the Lume Pad 2 means the video needs to be exported, converted to sbs using ffmpeg and then aligned using other video editing software. The 3D view with a focus adjustment that can be locked in place during video capture really helps prevent this problem, but still isn’t completely foolproof.
Stereo videos brought over from iPhone 15 Pro/Max most of the time do not have the right alignment when brought to the Lume Pad 2, also requiring editing on a PC to align before bringing over to the LUme Pad 2. This feature would go a long way to help people have a more stress free experience with videos on the device.
- LeiaChat Rear Camera Focus Lock
The rear camera is great to have available for LeiaChat, but every time I try to use it the focus goes in and out wildly at very subtle changes in the scene being captured and distance to objects. For the person on the other end this results in a really uncomfortable experience, to the point that I really hesitate to even use it. Being able to lock focus like with the 3D camera preview should solve this problem.