This Oculus Rift Project Brings You One Small Step Closer To That Hoverboard You’ve Always Wanted

The bad news: Yeah, that clearly fake Hoverboard video from a few months ago is still, sadly, quite fake.

The worse news: Unless we figure out a quick and easy way to defy a few laws of physics, we probably won’t see anything like that come to reality anytime soon.

Reality? Pfft. Who needs real reality when we’ve got virtual reality?

It’s a bit rough right now, but this project by a team out of Amsterdam shows how something like a hoverboard could be pulled off in VR.

The basics: take a Wii Balance Board to sense how you’re leaning, then tie in a Kinect to track the player’s body positioning (bringing your flailing hands in-game, for example). Strap on an Oculus Rift, and render a virtual environment to zoom around. Tada! Thing #234,123,418 made possible by virtual reality.

The whole thing could use a bit of work — it doesn’t look super fun, as is — but the idea seems like a sound one. Chuck E. Cheese has already said it wants to experiment with the Rift in its arcades; imagine something like this tied into something like Top Skater. Sounds a lot more fun than the wonky ticket grabbing game they’ve got planned, doesn’t it?

In the end, just remember, you bojo: those boards don’t work on water.