Main > Main Forum
Innovative trackball - a little big for most cabs
ahofle:
Ouch... that would hurt when falling off the cliffs in Marble Madness.
Effayy:
That looks like an awesome idea, but there's just one problem I can see with it.
Let's say you're playing a FPS on that bad boy... You start to run with your character, and then stop at a corner or something... If you were to do this in real life, your body would balance you in such a way that you could quickly decelerate and still be vertical. On this machine though, you would get the ball rolling at a speed, then when you attempt to stop on a dime, the ball would keep rolling, sending you arse over tea-kettle in the process....
I always imagined that the product that would work best for this sort of thing would be more like a circular convex-shaped treadmill. It would have rollers on all sides to allow it to move in whatever direction... And of course, you'd look less like a hamster. :)
- FA
SirPoonga:
--- Quote from: Effayy on September 27, 2005, 10:23:33 am ---Let's say you're playing a FPS on that bad boy... You start to run with your character, and then stop at a corner or something... If you were to do this in real life, your body would balance you in such a way that you could quickly decelerate and still be vertical. On this machine though, you would get the ball rolling at a speed, then when you attempt to stop on a dime, the ball would keep rolling, sending you arse over tea-kettle in the process....
--- End quote ---
If the ball is approximately your mass then it will work fine as then instead of trying to stop your mass from moving (remember, you are actually not moving relative to the world) you are stopping an equal mass.
How, the problem with this is you are running on a curved surface, it will feel weird.