Innovative trackball - a little big for most cabs

[dag2000]

This is actually a pretty neat concept, but some evil deep in my heart keeps imagining swim flippers on this guy's feet.

[Level42]

Uhhhhh, missing link ?

[quarterback]

missing link ?

[paigeoliver]

That thing would jump out of it's cup if the user did any serious manuevers.

[dag2000]

Uhhhhh, missing link ?

The link is in the word "This"

[hypernova]

that'd be some SERIOUS exercise on games like centipede and marble madness!  and i bet there's games that'd require more movement than those games.

[Franco]

Would make Pacman interesting too if you got it to work digitally! I can imagine running in one direction and looking over my shoulder to see blinky and co chasing!

[Flinkly]

i'd probably trip all the time.

[nullb0y]

oh mannnn
i  MUST HAVE IT!!!
wouldnt be to difficult to make one of those either me thinks

[Ed_McCarron]

Sure... Then get yourself a water bottle, some sunflower seeds, and call yourself a hamster.

[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]

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....

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.