The Only Reason I Travel With My VR Headset Is the One Thing Meta Needs to Focus on More: Fitness

I almost never travel with VR headsetsNo matter how many times I have been told to fly with a Pro vision Watching movies is great, or how helmets can help you create a virtual computer desk on the road. But I took one with me for my last three -week trip, and there was only one reason: it was my fitness equipment.

I worked to lose weight last year and increase my exercise. VR training have be part of my dietBecause they are motivating, they don’t need a lot of equipment and I can do them at home without visiting a gymnasium. I use Supernatural, Meta’s Fitness Service subscription, and The Classic Beat Saber, with a few others in the mix too.

For my last trip, I realized that I had to continue the momentum and that Quest 3 The VR headset was not so difficult to pack with me. I wear my CPAP machine with me, after all, so I can wear a quest.

I am happy to have done it, because I made training sessions on a family trip from overseas otherwise sedentary, and it even motivated me to go out and walk more. But it also reminded me of something that I had been thinking for over a year. Meta simply does not advance the physical form in VR as she should.

Hey me meta, remove your buttocks from the sofa

The potential for virtual reality to function as a fitness accessory is massive. I have already seen the impact in my own health. With Supernatural’s heart rate monitoring support via a telephone application that connects to devices like Apple Watch, it allows me to keep an eye on the intensity. Mixed reality modes can work functionally to keep me aware of my environment more safely. I use mixed reality mode all the time in Supernatural for this reason.

And yet problems remain. Of course, a big one is always the size and weight of the helmet, and the strangeness of sweating in glasses attached above your head. There are ways to alleviate this, like a silicone facial piece that I use to help repel sweat or a rigid visor type strap that raises the helmet of my cheeks a little. I would like something lighter with better ventilation, more optimized by fitness.

The battery life is also far from ideal. The two hours of average quest battery are more than sufficient for any training (I only do half an hour), but the battery life on the quest 3 that I use plunged since two years ago. Training could eliminate up to 40% of my battery now.

However, I have bigger problems with the slowness of software and services. When I spoke with the former chief of horizon VR Mark Rabkin last year of the unexploited potential of more physical form in VR, he only described the territory of “stable producer”. And that’s what it does, at least with regard to Meta’s investments in the area: flat.

Supernatural has seen reductions in staff and budget this year, and I noticed the community of the Facebook supernatural group when I saw the changes. I also saw it, and for a subscription application which is supposed to promise a mixture of music and coaching in new always creative routines, it is a disappointment.

What is also disappointing and worrying is Meta’s deletion of his own fitness monitoring application on Quest, called Move this spring. I used to follow the number of active minutes for which I used the helmet, which helped me reach my half-hour goals. Now I use an Apple Watch timer.

Meta has made no progress with folding in a more organic support for watches or fitness applications either. Although Supernatural can follow my heart rate, it is an aberrant value. The quest should be associated with watches and cardiac frequency trackers in all areas and deliver readings in any application you want. I want more than that too: estimated steps, burn of calories, graphics. In short, I want the quest to do what fitness monitoring watches can already do. With the quest, I am satisfied less in exchange for immersiveness.

Google and Apple quickly catch up

If Meta does not move quickly here, she could find herself lapped by competition. Android XR of Google Could easily find ways to integrate fitness and health characteristics into the upcoming helmets and glasses, especially with Fitbit already part of the image. Apple could also return the switch and add music and physical shape to its own future helmets each time it looks like. Apple is probably waiting for more affordable and lighter helmets before making this movement, but I would absolutely be shocked if it did not happen.

Fitness is also, for me, the Killer application of VR more than anything else. I cannot get a holographic coach and aware activities of the movement elsewhere. When it’s good, it’s like a magic portable gymnasium. And whatever the company, this experience will have a killer field to people who already spend hundreds, even thousands for fitness and gymnasium equipment, which could find much more justifiable to spend than players or observers of revolted cinema.

I expect Meta to add fitness and health functions to her XR devices at the VR, AR and AI Meta Conference, Meta focused in September. The last of the company Oakley smart glasses are clearly focused on sport. And when I asked Meta’s portable headAlex Himel, that more fitness and sports features would come to Meta equipment, he told me to listen to connect.

Meta could choose to focus on fitness hooks to her smart glasses, including a pair expected later this year with wrist orders and a display. Perhaps there will be integrations with watches and fitness applications to follow or start training, or even, like the Rumor says Meta could even make its own watch. I hope, however, that Meta does not forget her VR devices. Virtual training is a very real and useful current tool, and I want them to be even better in the future. Now is the time to get there, because if Meta does not move faster, someone else will.