Can’t get to the mountain? Just head for midtown. At the Reebok Sports Club in New York City, there's a patch of faux snow that might well be the Mother of All Simulations. The Ski and Snowboard Simulator is a surging, rolling, swaying, pitching, heaving, and yawing hydraulic recreation of the famed slope at Vail, Colorado. This one-of-a-kind simulator took inventor Jim Rodnunsky eight years and $4 milllion to develop. Say hello to the cutting edge of virtual exercise.
At their most complex, virtual exercisers are sophisticated simulations that deliver the demands, stresses,
and sensations of a sport or exercise with unprecedented verisimilitude and precision. On a smaller scale, a dose of silicon-generated virtual reality makes for sweaty scenarios. Beginning to show up at some health clubs are the VRBike and the VRClimber from Textrix in Irvine, California. Their 3-D CD-ROM graphics make for aerobic adventures on a Caribbean isle, in a New England town, or among the clouds.
Closer to home is the Exertainment system from Life Fitness of Franklin Park, Illinois. The goal here is to save home exercise equipment purchased with the most earnest of intentions from an all-too-common fate: becoming a very expensive coat rack. Just connect the company's Lifecycle 3500 bike to a Nintendo system to motivate your performance during exercise. The connection kit, bike, and two pieces of software cost $799.
(Pictured is inventor Jim Rodnunsky in mid-schuss on his high tech Ski and Snowboard Simulator.)
