How much money would you spend in order to make sure you could have the best first person shooter gaming experience possible? How about $650,000? That"s what it took to combine a number of elements to make a simulator that was used to play a pre-release version of Electronic Arts" upcoming game Battlefield 3.
The final result will be shown on Monday night on the UK TV show The Gadget Show. You can check out a teaser trailer for the episode in the above video.
In what has to be one of the greatest decisions ever in terms of spending someone else"s money, the show"s creators brought together several different companies to create the Battlefield 3 simulator. Igloo Vision provided the "monitor"; a 360 degree dome that"s over 13 feet high and close to 30 feet wide.
A Swedish company called MSE Weibull created an portable omni-directional treadmill that was modified to let the player move the game"s character using his body as a controller. It also involved a Kinect hack, 10 infra-red motion tracking cameras, and 12 paintball markers which allowed the player to actually feel being shot by the game"s character.
Is this set up over the top? Of course it is. It is just about the coolest thing we have ever heard of? Pretty close. We can imagine some super rich celebrity or businessman getting this kind of stimulator built in his house in the Hamptons. If we had some money we might be tempted to duplicate this ourselves. We can"t wait to see the full program on Monday.