Foot-controlled 'Stinkyboard' launching in June, Kickstarter

[Remingthon]

Stelulu Technologies will launch a PC controller designed for the foot called the Stinkyboard in June for $119, with pre-orders available in the company's upcoming Kickstarter.

The Stinkyboard in a cross-shaped board with four programmable buttons that's meant to act as a replacement for a mouse. In typically mouse-and-keyboard-heavy games, such as first person shooters, users can perform simultaneous actions. According to the board's description, a player could strafe, switch weapons or throw an item with the Stinkyboard while still keeping regular functionality in a keyboard.

Stelulu plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign soon, and those interested can sign up for alerts through the board's homepage.

The Stinkyboard is only compatible with Windows PCs. Polygon will be speaking with the board's creators at PAX East. Check back for our live coverage all weekend long.


http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/20/412910 ... r-incoming

[nateight]

"Stinkyboard"? Okaaay...a Wii Balance Board has fully analog motion at half the price, and as such it's a Kickstarter I could easily see failing miserably if they want more than a few thousand dollars, thereby proving to interested parties that "the public doesn't want foot control". I still say the potential market for similar devices will shortly become deep enough to support multiple approaches, but one or two public failures could do irreparable damage to foot control as a concept and potentially deal VR a significant setback. What worries me more than that, though, is that this is clearly a WASD replacement as an input device for avatar motion. That means avatar rotation is tied to what? In their WoW demo it's got to be mouselook, but VR games would be encouraged to peg a crosshair in the center of your view and have you turn your character with your head. I won't know for certain until my Rift arrives, but I strongly suspect that if the game industry unilaterally decides to always tie character rotation to head tracking, the Rift, Oculus, and this little VR renaissance we're enjoying will fall flat on its faceplate. We have thumbsticks for that if necessary, and it's worth keeping mice around as a dominant VR controller if that's the only way we can have free head motion.

As part of a larger continuum of foot controllers or a separate macro device it's got some potential and I hope it finds a nice little niche market, but I'll keep my analog HID pedals, thanks. As a thing that could convince AAA developers to remove the single biggest selling point of VR and turn the Rift into a fancy face monitor, though? KILL IT WITH FIRE.

Nice find, though. I'll be keeping an eye on this.