The reason why I made this device goes back at the time when I run  Doom for the first time on my pc.
I was amazed to be able to walk around inside those rooms and 3d (almost) virtual spaces; something I never tried before.
I was also so amazed about the ways of controlling the game that Id sftware brought at the same time with the game itself: keyboard, joystick, mouse.
Well, I went crazy about the feeling I got moving the player with the mouse...so realistic!
Every little movement of my hand on the mice was perfectly represented by the player movements on the screen; but while he was walking, I was only moving my right hand...
So I begun to think that it would have been very funny to have a control peripheral that could simulate player's movement. I mean something more than depressing a keyboard switch or moving a hand with the mouse.

As the mouse is an optical-mechanic device with high resolution movements,  I started to think on how I could apply that technology to simulate  man's walking movements.

A FITNESS TAPIS ROULANT (fitness running belt) !!! yeah!!

Well that was not a bad idea except from the fact that I did not own it.
I left the tapis roulant (fitness running belt) project basically for three reasons:

1) too much expensive;

2) the only kind of tapis roulant that seem to work fine is the one with electric engine, so I would not be able to control the speed fo the player directly from my legs .

3) I discovered to have an old stationary bike (one of my grandmother fat war)  in my garage, so a lots of friend of mine. I also discovered that there are lots of low cost stationary bikes in commerce that really works fine (at least to ride Duke3d). Thinking that It would have been great to play net games against other "bikers", I decided to work on stationary bikes.

Even if to someone might seem easy...first of all there was one big problem to solvel: how to make an easy system that could fit on different kind and type of bikes.
I mean a standard device.

...Mumble, mumble... A PEDAL !!!!

Every kind of bike use pedals for its movement and they are quiete similar one to each other.

That's it.

While I was making prototype over prototype  came out Duke3d...my gosh could not believe it.

So I started to calibrate my device for the best game over the time: DUKE NUKEM 3D.

THAT'S WHY