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Surfing the Earth with the Wii Balance Board

If you're anything like me, when you first caught wind of Nintendo's newest Wii-controlling contraption, the Balance Board, you quickly conjured up images of videogames involving leg-powered exploration -- running, climbing, jumping, and the like -- thinking to yourself that we are inching ever closer to full immersion in the virtual realm. Or maybe you thought that it was just a silly novelty item. That's a perfectly valid position as well.

Regardless of anyone's initial expectations, the fact remains that all we've been able to do with the peripheral thus far is exercise, ski, or, *ahem*, cheer, and that's not enough. Thanks to the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, however, we can add one more application to that list -- air surfing (dramatic pause) the WORLD.

The following video shows one application for the Wii Balance board we haven't seen before, although I'm not exactly sure how this particular function could be construed as useful. It also gives us all a glimpse of just how far a pair of very dedicated Silver Surfer fans could potentially go to re-create the fictitious existence of their favorite superhero.

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