Peloton is a sports simulator that uses the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) to create virtual environments for athletic training and competition. In particular, it creates environments suitable for touring or racing along road courses. Users participate in simulations by walking or running on treadmills or by pedaling stationary bicycles. Each user’s exercise equipment is attached to a local computer, and these computers are connected to simulation servers by the World Wide Web. Users may exercise alone or share Peloton virtual spaces with others. Peloton’s virtual environments reproduce sights, sounds, and terrain features from actual road courses. The visual component of this environment is a synthetic, three-dimensional landscape, modeled in VRML, which combines computer-generated graphics with images of actual road courses. The virtual environment also provides simulation participants with force feedback corresponding to a course’s changing terrain. The simulator ch...
Gianpaolo U. Carraro, Mauricio Cortes, John T. Edm