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>>From http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/05/technology/circuits/05kilo.html

A Joystick That Challenges You to Sweat
 by Noah Shachtman, Feb 5 2004

JOSH TORRISI'S biceps are burning. His pecs are sore. There's a film of
sweat on his forehead. But Mr. Torrisi hasn't been to the gym in nearly a
week. He has just finished playing a video game.

A Maryland start-up company has put together a new game pad that builds up
more than a player's thumbs. Instead of maneuvering with the standard set
of miniature joysticks, users of the kiloWatt controller from Powergrid
Fitness (www.powergridfitness.com) steer a shoulder-high steel alloy pole.

The device is due to reach stores in June. Its $700 price tag may exceed
the grasp of most gamers. But to a panting Mr. Torrisi, a 26-year-old
advertising executive, there was no question that just a few minutes of
pushing against the kiloWatt's metal rod made for a serious workout.

"This hurts so good," he said after trying out the machine at Play, an
arcade and lounge in Greenwich Village.

A Powergrid co-founder, Phil Feldman - a 10,000 mile-per-year bicyclist -
said that exercise machines bored him. There is no competition on a
treadmill, "so there's never the kind of intensity you see in sports," he
said. "You never push into that level of pain." During a particularly bad
winter in 1996, Mr. Feldman could not go bike riding, and he could not
stand the StairMaster a minute longer. So he fused some bicycle parts and
connected the contraption to a high-end computer workstation running a
custom-built flight simulator.

About the size of a compact car, the hang-glider-like apparatus was not
exactly built for the den. And it wouldn't work with the off-the-shelf
games made for twitching thumbs, either; it took too much effort to
control.

"When you swing more than 200 pounds of meat and metal around, the lag
times are very, very long," Mr. Feldman explained.

He and his partner, Greg Merril, knew that a commercial version of the
workout machine would have to move joystick-quick so players could flex
through their favorite titles.

It wasn't until 2002 that Mr. Feldman figured out how to make that happen.
Now instead of measuring motion, sensors pick up force, much the way a
bathroom scale registers what you weigh, not how you step on it.

When a player pushes and pulls on the kiloWatt's steel rod, sensors pick
up microscopic flexes of the metal. A processor calculates how many pounds
of force the player is exerting and converts the pressure into on-screen
action.

The player hardly moves, but the small motions and the constant isometric
pressure can be strenuous.

After a couple of laps of Grand Turismo 3, "I had to tell myself, 'Push
it, push it,' " said Jay Brown, a 32-year-old photographer from Brooklyn.
"In the middle of the game I thought I might throw in the towel."

Game play more than doubles oxygen consumption and increases players'
heart rates by about 50 percent, according to a preliminary study of 15
people using the machine. The tests were conducted by Dr. Dan Drury, an
assistant professor of health and exercise sciences at Gettysburg College
who is serving as a consultant to Powergrid.

Whatever the device's fitness merits, Libe Goad, the editor of
GameGal.com, an online magazine, doubts the kiloWatt will sell well. "As
cool as it is, I'd be extremely surprised if a high-priced, gimmicky
peripheral like the kiloWatt would ever become anything more than a
novelty among the gaming set," she said by e-mail.

Game companies have tried for years to get players to sweat. In the
1980's, Nintendo released its Power Pad, a vinyl floor mat with
foot-sensitive switches that enabled a gamer to sprint through pixilated
track meets. More recently, players scored points in Dance Dance
Revolution series by moving their feet to a disco beat. There have also
been attempts to link stationary bicycles to virtual worlds; so far, none
has met with much success.

But Powergrid takes a different approach by trying to turn already-popular
games into exercise routines. The testers at Play liked what the machine
did for their games.

"In a regular racing game, the car reacts too much. It flies all over the
place," Mr. Torrisi said. "With the extra resistance, it actually felt
more like the ride of a real car."

Mr. Brown said, "It somehow raises your endorphins, gives you an
adrenaline rush."

"Video games used to be a mental thing," he said. "Now there's this
physical element."


http://www.powergridfitness.com/kilowatt.html
It looks like a big upright pole with Playstation 2 controls on it. My
guess is, you push forward to move and hit the arrow buttons to look
around. Shweet!

-- 
KC -->>a shout out to Steve Long ;)

"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than
to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence."
  -- Mohandas Gandhi