Cyclepong 2.0 beautifully weds exercise with Pong
It's unofficially official: humans will never, ever stop figuring out new ways to play Pong. Further proof of said statement comes in the form of Cyclepong 2.0, an update to a marvelous project that combines the art of biking with the joy of playing Pong. Put simply, the inventor created an arcade-like installation with a pair of exercise bikes, an LCD screen and customized software that enables a pair of individuals to pedal forward and back in order to move their pixels. For those in England (Suffolk, to be precise), you can actually get in a game for yourself at Southwold Pier, but everyone else will have to be satisfied with the demonstrative video posted after the jump.






















What are they going to think of next? Virtual byciling?
The fake golf grass is unimpressive, but if they configured it to power itself they might be on to something...but in the meantime ill be content with ringing the bell to warn the LCD that im comming but will never get there.
Genius!
The entire fun of pong was being able to use the original dial to move your paddle with one hand while holding your beer in the other.
What have they done?
they've now made it so you can play hands free and hold two beers
Touché.
That would be Southwold Pier (not southwoRld). And it's part of a much larger exhibition of equally esoteric machinery made by Tim Hunkin.
The man's a tinkering genius. And he's got a website:
http://www.underthepier.com/
What they should do is have your deflector move only as fast as you peddle. That way you'd keep your motion/heart rate up. Pedaling forward and backward seems dumb to me.
Looks like wii fit has some stiff competition.
Have they made a Pong game where you move your paddle left or right based on which side you're putting your weighted on? If so, then I apologize.
umm... i don't know, haven't found any device that I can put my weighted on
The video is just as boring as I thought pong on a exercise bike would be. Thank you for not letting my expectations down.
Hey, I live near Southwold - in fact, went there today. What are the chances of that? In fact, I'm going tomorrow, aswell, so I'll take a look.
Tim Hunkin is an awesome guy, though.
Now I'm all for anything that makes exercising more fun, but the video is of no help at all. Without the paragraph in the post describing it, all I would think is this is two guys sporadically peddling exercise bikes while a 3rd person watches. At least show it from behind the riders so we can see the bikes controlling the game on the screen.
Thank you ... I thought i was the only one who noticed how completely useless this video is..
just like reading a book...
you have to imagine what's goin on there :D
I played something like this a while back during the London Games Festival '07. Had a bunch of arcade classics including Pacman and Frogger, all controlled by bicycle.
Unfortunately a pint of beer was around £5 that night, so I will forever have a negative view of the occasions. Even if the music was awesome.
If you look at the video on the Cycle Pong version 1 page, you get a better idea of the rig in action.
nice post... the video doesn't show that much though...?