Death Stranding turned into literal walking simulator with treadmill

Electrical engineer Allen Pan uses fitness tech to transform Death Stranding into a real-life walking simulator.

YouTuber, gadget wiz, and Mythbusters star Allen Pan has done some nifty things; first he created a real-life replica of Thor's unmovable Mjolnir hammer, a sword made of ice, a sword made of fire, and even some webshooter and lightsaber prototypes. His latest invention turns the boring chore of dreamill (I mean treadmill) exercises into a game.

Using some compelling tech science, Pan was able to rig a DualShock 4 to a treadmill and to literally control Sam, the main player character in Death Stranding, by walking. Pan hooked up the DualShock 4's potentiometers to a custom relay kit connected to the treadmill that essentially opens a circuit connection as he walks or runs on the treadmill. Walking on the treadmill simulates pressing forward on the left analog stick, whereas running simulates pressing L3 to run.

"All I have to do is take the rotoring coder from the treadmill and use an Arduino to calculate how fast someone is walking on the treadmill, then the Arduino can control a digital potentiometer that is connected to a PS4 controller. In that way, we get a treadmill that I could walk 50-60 hours on no problem, that let's me play Death Stranding as it probably was intended to be played," Pan said in the video.

The result sees Death Stranding's Norman Reedus walking in-game without having to actually touch the controller at all. It's kind of like a VR simulation experiment.

"This is the most realistic game because you have to walk to walk," Pan said.

I'm just dying to know what Hideo Kojima thinks about this...