A man is cycling from Lands End to John O’Groats — without ever leaving Dundee.
Aaron Puzey has developed a virtual reality app that allows him to travel through Google’s Streetview from an exercise bike in his house.
He climbs on board the stationary bike in his flat for half an hour a day, and has racked up over 400 miles so far.
The 44-year-old software engineer has “travelled” through cities including Penzance, Cardiff, Bristol and Manchester on his VR journey without ever having to leave the confines of his own home.
Aaron uses a cadence monitor to measure his speed, which is then translated in the app to move him through the virtual world on the 1000 mile route.
He set out on May 15 and travels around 10 miles a day and reckons he has another 50 days to go before he completes the trip to John O’Groats.
Aaron is documenting his journey on his blog, Cycle VR, where he uploads video and photo highlights.
He says the virtual world he has passed through has made him want to visit many of his destinations in real life – and that he now wants to develop his software into a commercial product.
Aaron said: “I’ve been riding the exercise bike for years, just half an hour each day, but it’s just a bit monotonous.
“I’d been day dreaming for a while about the possibility of using VR to make it a bit more fun and now of course the technology has arrived to make it happen.
“I don’t have to worry about hills, cars, rain or anything else.
“Bristol was a nice place. I’d happily go there for real. I also passed through Weston-super-mare to see Banksy’s Dismaland.
“Even just riding through countryside and forests is enjoyable.”
Aaron’s system works by translating his start and end point into directions – and waypoints he wants to visit – using Google’s maps service.
That then loads panorama images from Streetview, allowing him to cycle through them using his exercise bike and Samsung VR headset.
Aaron added: “Some things, like buildings, fit very well to this model and look quite solid, but things like trees and hedges and anything lumpy often just look a mess.
“I’ve also seen things like squashed bugs on the Google camera, bad colours in some scenes and strange black sinkholes.
“However, even with those problems it still feels like I’m there.”
He added: “I never appreciated just how much of a problem nausea is in VR.
“Turns out I’m super sensitive so this project has been a challenge reducing nausea. I’ve arrived at a solution that works pretty well for me.
“Holding the handlebars really helps for not feeling disorientated.”
