Fans of Back to the Future II have always dreamed of riding Marty McFly's hoverboard and now, thanks to some clever coding, you can -- in virtual reality.
Developer Kieran Lord, aka Cratesmith on Twitter, used the Oculus Rift and a Wii Balance Board to create the closest thing you can get to experiencing a real hoverboard ride right now.
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"The way I'm imagining the hoverboard physics is slightly different to the BTTF maglev skateboard,'" said Lord in a comment about the project on Reddit. "It's more a snowboard with a 'virtual slope' of the front/back angle of the board. If that works and feels good the player could just get up a ton of speed and then stomp their back foot to get the same effect as going over a jump ramp."
In the video, you can see Lord testing the board out in virtual space as he maneuvers the controls on the Wii Balance Board in meatspace.
It takes a while for the demonstration to get going, but once it does, along with the cinematic Back To The Future theme music, you begin to get an idea of just how fun riding this virtual hoverboard could be.
"I'm hoping that they don't just lawyer up," said Lord, in response to commenters mentioning potential copyright issues. "I'm really not opposed to talking to Universal [the film's distributor] if that's needed to make this happen."
For those keeping track, the date of the fictional future depicted in the film is October 21, 2015. So while real hoverboards still haven't appeared on store shelves, in the meantime, this virtual version might just be good enough.
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