​We understand that the virtual reality revolution is well underway and not everyone is going to want to wait for the kinks in our design prep to be worked out. In the meantime, you can rig your own version of the Fulcrum virtual reality game controller with a balance board like the Reebok Professional Core Board or StrongBoard Balance. You can load a smartphone with an app that will allow your smartphone to function as a joystick/keyboard/mouse for PC games. There are a lot of different smartphone apps that can turn your phone into a gamepad or joystick. Make sure you find one that uses the tilting of the smart phone in order to make directional movements with the game pad.

Then, attach the smartphone to the center of the balance board, possibly by attaching velcro tape to a smart phone case. If you've set the smartphone up right, the smartphone will make directional movements in the game when you lean forward, back, and to each side on the balance board. You can find some example balance boards and app videos below.

Please be safe. Putting on VR goggles while standing on a balance board definitely has it's fair share of obvious risks. Using a partner to spot you wouldn't be a bad idea. 

Let us know what your favorite gamepad emulators, balance boards, games or VR experiences using the Fulcrum design with your phone and balance board.

Spoiler: This is exactly why Mean Monkey Sports is developing the Fulcrum full-body game controller.

Along with all of the exclusivity debates that have embroiled much of the talk surrounding virtual reality for the past few months, another discussion has been ongoing among gamers, developers, and onlookers: What’s the best way to get about in virtual reality?

Talk to Oculus VR and HTC and you’ll hear drastically different things. Oculus, with its focus on seated and standing experiences, argues for the idea of artificial locomotion, or using gamepads and controllers to handle your in-game movement — regardless of what founder Palmer Luckey once said. HTC says that real-world movement is the best option for VR, letting people walk around in their roomscale-tracked spaces.

Read more: http://www.digitaltrends.com/virtual-reality/vr-locomotion-movement-omni-hover-junkers/#ixzz4E2nReM3F 

It was a rainy February day in Eugene, Oregon. The year was 2004, but in my experience most February days in Eugene are rainy. Pacific pressure systems careen over the Oregon Coast drenching the Willamette Valley before dropping snow on the Cascade Mountains.

My body was in the library trying to get into the second semester of my first year of law school. My brain was freediving off the coast of Oahu. I tried to bring my thoughts back to Oregon, but they rested somewhere in the middle. Mulling over if there was anyway to simulate the experience of freediving over endless coral reefs teeming with life.

I took a break from studying, walked downstairs, out into the rain, and let the thoughts run. I imagined a flat-screen television on the bottom of an Endless Pool. Probably semi-doable, if you ignored the challenges of projecting images through moving water that had been oxygenated by jets.

I remembered watching the "Lawnmower Man," the epic virtual reality movie of the 1990's. While VR had died out for the time being, I guessed that it was only a matter of time, engineering improvements, and finding the right application before it reincarnated into a technology capable of replicating the floor of the ocean.​

The image of the virtual reality pool gave way to the soft cold rain. Contract law was waiting.

The beauty of the Fulcrum full-body virtual reality game controller is how many real-world experiences it can replicate. While originally designed to replicate the sport of riverboarding, the sky and sea are literally the limit.

For instance, Kymera Body Board has developed a really cool electric body board technology. The technology is just moving into production and the activity can easily be replicated in the virtual world with the Fulcrum full-body virtual reality game controller's leaning-based steering.

What electric body board games can you imagine?