The first time I ever saw a copy of Make Magazine was in the bathroom at a GDC party held at Three Rings corporate office in 2005. I found it tucked on the side of the toilet much like you might find more racy fair in any college dorm bathroom. I almost stole it but everyone was so nice and dressed like pirates so I only made off with a subscription card. Make, the porn of the geek, has a post on its blog about Moriash Moreau's DIY Second Life controller crediting Mark Wallace of 3PointD as the source. Basically it is a hacked USB keypad that you could use to interface SL with any electronics device.

It looks like the original intent of the project was to interface with an exercise bike. Then you could tool around the world on your SL bike while actually being on your own bike in RL. While interfacing with a bike is pretty cool, the generic interface is even cooler. Early on in the development of OpenSceneGraph the rendering engine was demonstrated at I/ITSEC, the worlds largest simulation conference, including a full up simulation of hang gliding. The users would strap into a harness and be held above the ground with their faces in a screen. The users could then grab hold of the glider controls and hang glide right on the conference floor. I want to do that in Second Life, and with this interface their is no reason why that couldn't be done. What would you interface with?