At long last, the machine that every First Person Shooter fan's been waiting for, has come to be. Check it out.

The device consists of a large hollow sphere which is mounted on a specially designed platform that allows the sphere to rotate freely as the user walks in any direction. The user wears a head-mounted display, which provides the virtual environment. Sensors under the sphere provide subject speed and direction to the computer running the simulation. Users can even ineract with objects in virtual space using a special manipulator.

Many applications for the VirtuSphere are foreseen:

* Military, Law Enforcement, Dangerous Occupations – training, simulations * Video/LAN arcades * Health and exercise – professional athlete training, fitness clubs * Business and personal communications * Education * Virtual travel and tourism * Virtual museum exhibits * Entertainment at events * Home gaming and exercise

The ability to move physically and thereby control the simulation is one of the enabling technologies behind such science fictional devices as the Star Trek holodeck. The holodeck is a virtual environment that provides infinitely varied participatory, interactive entertainment in a very small space. On Federation starships, stressed crewmembers need to have some sort of outlet for exercise and entertainment.

The official site seems to be down at the moment, probably due to traffic, but if there's anymore to report on this, we'll have it.

This machine has been the subject of fantasy for anyone that has played an FPS in their lifetime. The ability to actually interact physically with your environment is what keeps games from truly lending a sense of reality, but this will change that!

Ultimately, someone would put thirty of these in a warehouse, charge 30 bucks an hour, and you'd bring in your own system, plug it in and play away. Groups of people could rent the space for Lanparty's and such, and clans from different parts of the globe could buy chunks of time and have themselves their own war - for nearly real.

Users would wear sound isolating headphones and mic's, and voices from fellow players would be run through the game environment rather than straight to your head, (unless the game characters themselves were using headsets).

All that's needed are a couple tasers that give location based pain for when you get shot.

I'm in a cold sweat - I can't wait.