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Exercising in Virtual Reality

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KI4MVP

KI4MVP

formerly LJ4MVP
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I thought I'd start a more specific thread. I got my VR system earlier this year to get my out of my habit of going from sitting down working to sitting down watching TVs/movies. Since then I've lost 22 lbs. I recently found a game that is going to certainly accelerate the weight loss.

Beat Saber. This is probably the first killer app for VR. It's was created by a small team of 2 programmers (@gourimoko this could have been the two of us) with someone else doing a custom soundtrack. It's been on my wish list for a while now, I add games to that and wait for them to go on sale.

Steam VR recently added a feature (or I recently discovered it, not sure which) that shows the currently most played VR games. Beat Saber is the #1 game 24 hours/day, 7 days/week. It is compatible with Vive, Rift, and Windows Mixed Reality. Playstation VR version coming soon, and was just added to VR arcades. I saw estimates that it would instantly take 20% of the VR arcade game play traffic.

I've had mixed reaction to games I've had people try out on my system, but universally everyone I've had try this one likes it.

Here's a video of the tutorial

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zamMltuhdc


There are about 10 songs (I haven't counted) and the songs have 4 modes, from easy, standard, hard and expert. Here's an example of Hard

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDd4pfDFp-c


and expert mode

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiF4B_RmZ2M


I expect my weight loss rate to pick up with this game.
 
I'll tell you what, that would be great for people in wheelchairs.
 
cavman said:
I'll tell you what, that would be great for people in wheelchairs.
Click to expand...

possibly, there are some obstacles you have to either move left or right or duck. But it does say it can be played seated on the steam page. I'm not sure how they handle that. Maybe they just remove the obstacles for seated play. I find myself at times moving left or right even when there aren't obstacles, but you don't actually have to do that.

Here's another one that might work better for that. You aren't supposed to move from your spot at all in it. And this one you can use your own songs, which is unlike Beat Saber. Audioshield analyzes the songs and the gameplay is tied to sound of the song. Beat Saber the gameplay is preprogrammed for each song. With the right songs you can get a really, really good workout.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhSsdsu4yIk


With either game, I work up quite the sweat.

This one also might work seated even though it doesn't say that. I think you'd just have to rely on the shield more.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ1d7ZHQO54
 
cavman said:
I'll tell you what, that would be great for people in wheelchairs.
Click to expand...

I checked last night, there is an option to turn off the obstacles, so it should be playable in a wheelchair.
 
KI4MVP said:
I checked last night, there is an option to turn off the obstacles, so it should be playable in a wheelchair.
Click to expand...
I thought there would be. Most developers do have accessibility in mind, and a lot are fat and probably said shit, we need a toggle here.
 
I beat off to 3D POV porn, does that count?
 
Also an update to my original post. I've now lost 31 lbs since I got my VR in feb (and 9 pounds the last 22 days since I started this thread), from a combination of VR exercise and improved diet.
 
What vr system do you recommend getting?
 
The Voice said:
What vr system do you recommend getting?
Click to expand...

Of the popular ones:
HTC Vive & Vive Pro are the best. you can have large play areas, spot on tracking and 360 degrees out of the box. It also has the longest cord so you can have larger play areas (if you have room in your home). It's also the most expensive, especially Vive Pro.

Oculus Rift is next, but you need to get 3rd base station for some games. It comes with two for 180 degrees of tracking, a 3rd is needed for 360 degree tracking.

Windows Mixed Reality is the easiest to set up, has 360 degree tracking, but the tracking isn't perfect. The tracking is done from cameras in the headset instead of external sensors, so when the controllers in your hands go out of the range fo the camera, the position of your hands gets lost.

Many of the good games are in Steam, Windows Mixed Reality makes it a bit complicated to launch those, especially if you want to do it without taking off the headset.

All 3 of the above require a PC with a good graphics card.

Another option is PSVR, which requires a PS4. This is by far the cheapest option. It only does 180 degrees of tracking, which is fine for the games in this thread, but causes problems with others. It also doesn't have as wide of a selection of games, but Beat Saber is coming out for it soon.

Early next year Oculus is coming out with a system called Santa Cruz. It does inside out tracking like WMR, but is standalone, so no wires, no computer or gaming system required.

All of the systems above have 6 degrees of freedom in movement in the headset and the two controllers, one for each hand. This means you can move freely around in all directions and the movements are tracked, which is critical for exercising and makes other games a lot easier to play too. your arms and hands effectively become the controllers. HTC Vive also supports adding tracking to your feet for some games through add on trackers. So you can actually kick a virtual soccer ball by kicking it.

There are also currently standalone systems like Oculus Go. This is the cheapest way to try VR (aside from the kits where you put your phone inside), but won't work for exercise. This only has a single controller and only has 3 degrees of freedom in both headset and the controller. This means it tracks looking up, down, left and right, and turning in a circle, but won't track if you step to the side, squat, jump, etc, and doesn't track where your hand is, only the angle of the controller.
 
Time to give an update.

7 months since I bought my VR system and I've now lost 36 lbs. Also, as of Monday I'm officially off of my medication for type 2 diabetes (A1C 4.9 - spot on perfect), cholesterol (cholesterol 102), and triglycerides (triglycerides 57). All thanks to VR exercise and improved diet. I found it's easier to eat well when I'm exercising because I find I don't want to undo all of the hard work I just put in.

Also, Creed: Rise to Glory came out yesterday (trailers are in earlier post). I've only played it once for about a half hour so far, but my first impression is it's just flat out awesome.
 
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