The quintessential VR racquet-ball simulator, Racket: Nx Ah yes, virtual reality. Bring it up during any regular water-cooler chat, and you may receive a of from your peers. Now, let’s assume that virtual reality interests , otherwise you’d be . wide variety responses you somewhere that isn’t here And if you’re on the fence about jumping into the VR pool, you might be having a few recurring thoughts: What makes than interacting with each other’s digital avatars the way? interacting with each other’s digital avatars in virtual reality cooler old And which virtual reality platform is the ? And ? W ? Are ? Do you need a large playspace, or ?! best what software should you buy hat kind of experiences can you expect there really no “real” games will your cupboard suffice Stop and breathe deeply for a moment. One, two, three, four. Exhale. Better now? Lovely! Fortunately for both of us, this article answers of those dubiously worded questions. , allow me to articulate upon a prime benefit of VR that is _a_nd totally unlikely to cross the mind of anybody who has yet to submit to our c̶u̶l̶t̶ glorious way of living. none Instead super awesome VR slams your favorite HIIT class, any day of the week. I will sing this point to the high heavens . every single chance that I get A 2 hour back-to-back session of Eleven: Table Tennis, Sparc, and Thrill of the Fight in ascending order , with a gym membership I can go weight training while I awkwardly solicit the friendship of other gym-dwellers, and then I can sneak a dip into the hot tub before showering without anybody calling me out!” “But Gabriel , you absolutely can. And I’d never knock anybody for keeping that lifestyle alive. But why would I pay $10 to $20 or for a single interval-training session when doing in VR is 100% aerobics, 100% of the time? Yes more virtually anything Even with the recent attention that VR has received from the media, it doesn’t immediately click with most people (who haven’t played with the platform) that gaming in VR is quite literally the opposite of gaming on a flatscreen. VR has you walking around your room, bending over to pick virtual objects up off your floor, using repetitive arm motions to interact with the environment, bending your hips to throw harder punches, ducking to dodge bullets, dipping or crawling on your floor to crouch. In simple VR apps where physically intense movement isn’t even prioritized, you are STILL burning calories. . Just for wandering around your playspace The result of 2 hours spent playing zero-gravity frisbee in Echo Arena The difference is this: hours spent sitting down. Not to mention that it is to binge on fatty junk food while cozying up in a seat. using VR equates to hours spent standing up and using your body to navigate a living environment vs. significantly easier Notably, it is also much harder to cozy up with when you’re lost in what could totally pass for , a place where you would naturally need both hands free of Cheeto dust. Yknow, in-case you get spooked or something. anything Wes Craven’s vacation home Get to the point already! Alright, fine. Take a long, hard look at apps such as , or , or , or . Tell me that, given the primitive nature of commercial-grade VR in today’s market, we don’t already have a means of disrupting the standard gym model. Thrill of the Fight Holopoint Audioshield Sparc These are all “games” that have you, the player, twisting and shredding your arms and core in order to score points or compete against other players. Sparc could be an actual sport if its lobbies were coded to contain more than 3 other humans at one time. Thrill of the Fight is boxing, but you don’t ever lose teeth or sustain irreversible brain damage ( ). unless you’re younger than age 13 On average, I burn between 650 to 725 calories within roughly an hour spent playing Thrill of the Fight I get it- not all gym experiences are born equally. Some charge more, some charge less. Some charge more for crappy services and some charge less for the best goddang fitness training you’ll find in your life. In my opinion, the best gym is the one that . Period. So why would I choose VR over a membership? fits into your lifestyle Simply put: I’m choosing to boost the marginal utility of my PC. I keep up-to-date because I’m already a PC gamer. And by “gamer,” I mean geek. Which means that I’m speaking with the authority of a geek, to my fellow beloved geeks. I you! my GPU understand With the additional price of $350-$600 for a good , plus the one-time cost of whichever app or game that you’d like to exercise with, you’re set for a full-body workout routine that you’re free to complete from the comfort of your bedroom. For as long as you want, whenever you want. HMD If you add in a set of adjustable ($250-ish on sale) and then you also take advantage of your running shoes and actually , you’ll be covered for years. Unless, of course, your fitness goals call for a . Or your . Bowflex dumbbells with them go running bench set PC blows up In which case, you’re on your own. Conclusion In its current form, VR is taking the time that lazy people, like me, would normally spend being sedentary. And it’s offering a wonderful incentive to be… well, sedentary. not More than that, it’s offering a legitimate method of building fitness in exchange for hours spent gaming. I mean look at this guy, who lost ! Granted, I think that there is . 10 pounds in a week playing Skyrim VR a ton of potential here for the technology to be picked up by pro-athletes And we may eventually see v-sports become a part of the . Using a pair of optical lenses and two “hands,” we can without a hitch. And we may not currently see proliferation of peripherals such as or , but the technology is out there. sports entertainment industry simulate table tennis VR treadmills haptic suits that simulate resistance Before things heat up for VR, however, there needs to be a greater adoption of the existing tech and a . This way, prices on HMDs can feasibly go down and VR-friendly base systems will become more available/accessible/affordable. really hefty boost in market volume Who knows, maybe televised v-sports will become a multi-billion dollar industry by 2030. Or, maybe not. Either way, once VR hits a smartphone-like boom, expect to see the platform develop its athletic capabilities by leaps and bounds. Have you mixed VR into your fitness regimen?
