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Comment by sdrothrock | Hacker News Reader

It would be really neat if this could be used with Google Streetview. Another cool addition would be an accelerometer on the handlebars to enable steering (though I guess that would be problematic with a stationary bike).

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I kinda feel like the VR bike simulation would be the most boring experience. Put something like Mario Kart up there.

As someone who hates exercising, I found myself compelled to return to stroll around new virtual worlds. That said, a proper game is always going to be more interesting ;)

I tried this a few years ago as an experiment and built a site around it - www.routeviewer.com - the cycling is disabled

A video is available at -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujA9AqCs0Ok

I initially connect up an arduino, but then moved to ant+ protocol over a dongle. . The biggest problem is the refresh rates arent good enough on Streetview for proper cycling - plus the usage on google maps was high - so i ditched it

Adding steering is a logical next step. Meter the steering wheel's rotation, map it to the camera.

I've heard several recommendations to integrate this with Streetview, but IMO the resolution necessary for moving in small increments isn't there. It's much better served with a 3D environment.

Agreed - It seems trivial to build a Street View API integration into Unity or Unreal Engine 4.

I always wondered why games like Euro Truck Simulator never tried to use real geo data (not necessarily street view, but just accurate streets, shapes, cities and distances) for their games. After all, trying to rebuild a miniature europe seems like a dead end at some point and, maybe I'm alone with that, but using real world times to drive from Amsterdam to Berlin on a realistic route feels way more interesting to me.

Building realistic looking modes of the real world is a lot harder than building graphics in games like that looked, the last time I played one.

Also, licensing issues. Map data for commercial projects is not cheap.

See X-Plane, which uses OSM data and extrapolates from that.

Trivial? Are you sure that's the right word for what you're describing?

Uh, I have experience with VR, a year of experience in Unreal Engine 4, and used to work professional as a game developer, so yes :) You gotta keep in mind this is 2D projections too, not real 3D models, all it is is wrap-around images served rotated around a central camera.

I had 4 years of experience with UE3.5 (admittedly, I have not tried UE4), but it's far from trivial in that environment. Perhaps UE4 makes this process much easier, but I can't see it approaching "trivial."

When I see the words "trivial," I think of a weekend project - not something that would involve tons of man hours.

Shared vocabularies are hard :) My definition of trivial is "I can do it in less than half a day", which I've done this exact thing with before (to be able to navigate our office via our indoors Street View map)

Fair enough. Thanks for the conversation :)

You can get turntable riser rings that will enable this quite easily. You could even potentially modify the riser ring instead of adding more wires to the bike for more linear input(one axis instead of three).

There are already some training bikes that license Google Maps data - https://www.ifit.com/products/tdf

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