of dressing inappropriately and letting the robots do the work. they do know this is astroturf, don't they? i'm afraid the heat has finally got to us so this week we are cracking open the summer gadgets, and the legs, sorry about those. first thing we need to do is fire up the barbie and forget coal, forget gas, this is the gosun go. it is a solar—powered cooker. welcome to therme erding, nestled in germany's bavarian countryside, one of the largest thermal baths in europe, the perfect place to relax, have a drink, maybe do some pool yoga. oh, and did i mention, there's also 27 waterslides? there's a water slide, there's another one, that's a water slide too. yes, this is also europe's biggest waterslide park. but with 4,500 people visiting here every day, is 27 slides enough? what if you could change the slides at the flick of a switch? it's time to get my swimming trunks on for some serious journalism.

to go on one of the newest rides in the park, i will need more than my togs and a tube, though, i will need one of these. i'm going backwards! it was actually amazing. i was a bit sceptical. i think i need a bit of practice, i was going backwards, i was going forward, i didn't feel totally in control. essentially, i went down that slide with my eyes shut. i am no slide connoisseur but that was a pretty good slide. and because it's a vr slide, how about sliding through the snowy mountains, outer space, or this alien planet? that's four virtual slides all packed into the twists and turns of one real slide. sometimes people, especially older ones say, i like it more

without glasses, because they are overloaded with the system, but the young people, the kids and the young people and families we have here, about 10—29, they like it and they love it and they say it's the best thing they ever did in their life and so now we get about more than 50,000 visitors used the vr. normal landblubbing vr headsets have already got a bit of a rep for being complicated to use so getting the aquatic version to work well every day was a big challenge. yes, it was very difficult, the first thing we have to convince the owner that we want to do it. and we made the first tries, and then the owner of the therme erding tried it and after two tries, he was sick and he said, no, i don't like this, i don't want. because the difficulties, if you go on the slide on the left side, and in virtual reality, you go on the right side, you get this motion sickness. and to see how they

solved that problem, first we need to get rid of some of this water. all along this slide are these sensors and that is so the virtual reality headset knows exactly where you are, at exactly the right time, because you want what you're seeing to be the same as what you're feeling. get it wrong and you could end up feeling a little bit sick. stephen greenwood and his team spent months building and, crucially, testing the system. we did hundreds of tests going down the slide, each one of us has ridden the slide hundreds of times, because we had to make sure that we got it right. just off for a dip.

stephen's next plan is to take the vr off the slides and into the wild. so this is a diving mask version of the same thing i tried earlier. there's a phone in there, so you've got a virtual reality headset. you can also dive. the idea with this is that people who need to practise diving, like equipment repairers or even astronauts, can train in one of these, but i'm just going to go to a shipwreck. when you combine that sensory feeling of being in a different environment, with a completely virtual world over your eyes, it's a powerful combination. i think there is huge potential for military and marine technician training. these prototypes still need some work. for me, the image wasn't perfect and, more importantly, the waterproof phone that is hidden inside only knows where you're looking, not where you're moving. solving that problem is the next big challenge and, in terms of the slide, well, they've got plans for that too. we are considering adding more features, like sound and other sensory elements. i think there is a big therapeutic factor. i think that there is a lot that we can do with physical therapy, meditation, rehabilitation, and some of the psychological benefits that you can have from just floating in water and having a relaxing experience in front of your eyes. it sounds like this could just be

the start of aquatic vr. until then, though, i think the best i can do is just help out with the testing. wow, steve, that seemed like a really tough assignment. it was hard, i went low, it was difficult, i did it for you guys. well done, yes. so you've done a lot of work with vr over the last two or three years and it seems at the moment we are talking more about vr coming to these theme park areas than to the living room. the thing is, headsets are still quite expensive, they are getting cheaper but they are quite expensive and are still difficult to use so in a themepark environment, it can be controlled and managed and this is the thing, not everyone has a rollercoaster or a waterslide in their home. that's true, yeah. it does seem that adds to the experience, doesn't it? it adds to the senses because vr doesn't do that at the moment. the promise of vr that we see in sci—fi films and all that sort of thing is that vr

will totally immerse us, it will fool every single sense of our body, but at the moment vr only fools two senses, oui’ eyes and oui’ ears, and it doesn't do that particularly well so maybe this is a way, the first step to fooling our other senses, our sense of motion, and our sense of touch. did you enjoy it, stupid question? i did enjoy it. i had reservations about going down down the slide with my eyes closed but once you get over that, it's fun, it's good. well done, take a long deserved break, it was arduous. it's been hard. we've been in the water — time to go for a bike ride now. gone are the days when you could just slap on a cycling helmet, and pootle around the roads and the cycle paths. these days you have to load up with the latest cycling tech. it's the law, and that's what lara lewington has been doing with the help of click‘s own boss, simon. meet simon — a regular cyclist and the editor of click. first off is the coros smart cycle helmet. it connects your mobile phone via bluetooth and, thanks to bone conduction technology, you can hear any sound that

you want from your phone — that can be directions or music — without blocking out the sound of the road around you. be safe. thank you. it can be controlled via a remote or its app, which allows you to save routes and share data with friends. it also has a wind—resistant microphone designed for calls, if you consider chatting on the phone while cycling is a good idea, that is. we had a nice chat on the phone there, the sound was amazing. it was so clear. definitely the best thing i've tried on a bike like that, just in terms of the quality of the call. with this, you've got the added dimension of making sure that the bone conduction things are in exactly the right place. it's quite a feeling. getting jawbone right is always a difficult one and with this, really after a couple of weeks

of trying to perfect it, to get the perfect signal, you kind of have to get it so tight you are almost garrotting yourself. when i'm in the middle of london and there is loads of traffic, it's kind of difficult to hear, i suppose, but i guess some people would say, it's better to hear the traffic than it is the music anyway. this is r—pur, an antipollution mask for cyclists and motorcyclists. the replaceable filters claim to keep pollution, pollen and viruses and bacteria at bay and, based on where you've been cycling, the app will access pollution data and figure out when you need to replace the filter. you looks slightly menacing in that. it's also 30 degrees in london today. it's pretty hot, yeah. it's better than some i have tried, i have to say, in that regard. it's a lot more comfortable than some i've tried before. and it's a slightly nicer design, perhaps. that said, it's very expensive compared to other masks. how about the idea that it connects to an app and aims to track the pollution that you're going to be encountering? to me, that sounds like a classic bit of tech overdesign. really, i think you can use commonsense a little bit to know

when to change filters. finally, we have blinkers which are claimed to be the next generation of bike lights. they can shine a laser light in the street and they also provide the normalfunctions you'd expect from a light but the question is, are they any better? they are all yours to give a go. so the conclusion? you've got the brake light, which lights up as you slow down, presumably because it's got an accelerometer, which is really impressive and, when you're a cyclist, you do worry that people not noticing when you're coming to a halt. left—right indicators — there are so few cyclists who use that as a method of indication. i don't think i've ever seen any, to be honest, and the instructions say, don't rely on this on its own, you've also got to use your arm.

i'd worry that i'd have too much stuff to think about, almost. that would concern me. they are very, very bright lights. there is almost an arms race in cycle lights today — they get righter and brighter — and these are very impressive even in daylight. that's it for the short cut of our summer sizzler for this year. i hope you've enjoyed it and don't forget the full—length version is up on iplayer for you to watch right now, if you fancy. we live on facebook and on twitter. after such an intense summer of sport, next week we are going to look back at some of the new tech that's been brought into play in the last few months. and we will leave you with one more thing which we hope illustrates the perils of filming someone going down a vr waterslide. enjoy this, our cameraman, nick, certainly did. laughter. today has been a slightly different

story, cloudy, breezy outbreaks of rain, this picture by our weather watcher in lincolnshire sums up some of the afternoon. line share of the sunshine has been across 0rkney and shetland, because they have been to the north of these fronts, which will only slowly continued progress is through this safe evening and overnight. 0utbreaks safe evening and overnight. outbreaks of rain but also, heavy and potentially thundery showers, working east through england and wales. earlier radar picture, you can see where rain has been falling.

some persistent rain, shower was pushing through england and wales, bringing rumbles of thunder and lightning and rain in a short amount of time. east, clearest bells, maybe a chance of seeing a peak of the perseid meteor shower. won't be a cold night, generally between ten and 15 celsius, still clearer skies across 0rkney and shetland. into the new working week, area of low pressure is stubborn to clear away from eastern counties in scotland and england, some showers here through tomorrow morning, could be heavy and thundery, gradually pulling away, for much of england, wales and northern ireland, sarah madoff cloud, one or two sharp showers. still that rain from central and northern parts of scotland, easing through the day, rest of the sunshine through shipments, i6 rest of the sunshine through shipments, 16 to 19 celsius for much of scotland, 20 four northern ireland, 20 to 23 for northern

ireland. central, eastern and southern england on tuesday will see the best of the sunshine, bit more cloud elsewhere, showers for northern ireland, parts of scotland, if you for northern england, temperatures not getting much above 18 or19, in temperatures not getting much above 18 or 19, in the sunshine across east anglia and south—east england, up east anglia and south—east england, up to 25,20 six celsius, east anglia and south—east england, up to 25, 20 six celsius, the northwest southeast split continues, high pressure across south—eastern parts of the uk, lower pressure further north and westminster will be some showers and it will be a cooler field. showery be some showers and it will be a coolerfield. showery rain be some showers and it will be a cooler field. showery rain getting its way further south and east through thursday as the front in a little ea rs through thursday as the front in a little ears its way, eventually introducing something a little bit fresher. for the week ahead, windy at times, particularly on wednesday, gusty, showers, spells of rain, especially the further north and west you are. dries weather in the south and east. this is bbc news, i'm chris rogers. the headlines at eight:

police in manchester say a shotgun was probably used in a shooting in the city's moss side area last night, 12 people, including two childern, sustained pellet—type injuries. thankfully, whilst the injuries are serious, they are not life—threatening. that is more luck than anything else. we could be investigating a murder enquiry. nasa's space probe begins its ambitious seven yearjourney to the sun after it finally takes off from cape canaveral. hundreds of british troops arrive in kabul to support the afghan army in its conflict with the taliban.