The folks over at Nonpolynomial Labs have been doing some interesting things lately (see this one for an interesting example). Their latest creation is a hack to turn a stationary exercise bicycle into an input device for virtual world Second Life. From their website comes word of LifeCycle v1.0:

Second Life can be an incredibly immersive world, seeing that it is based solely on user created content. However, there is only so much immersion that can happen through a keyboard/mouse control scheme. There are many different ways to control vehicles in real life, such as steering wheels, pedals, handle bars, and sticks, just to name a few. Implementing these control structures in Second Life allows users to get closer to the virtual world by giving them mechanisms they are familiar with in the real world.

Biking is the first of these controls we have decided to implement, because it is so ubiquitous.

Pretty cool. For the complete system, check out the project page here.

And apparently they’re not the only one’s who have done this. A comment from qDot Bunnyhug (gotta love the names people pick) over on the SL forum suggests another resident has done something similar, and perhaps a bit better… for now. Maybe I’ll see some documentation of that thing in the near future.