VR Well being & Train Institute Finds Many VR Video games Are Higher Train Than a Treadmill – Street to VR

According to Aaron Stanton, director of the newly formed Virtual Reality Institute of Health and Exercise, many of the popular VR games and applications are more effective than traditional treadmill exercise at burning calories. The organization recently announced a program for the independent evaluation of VR games in a controlled environment with the aim of publishing the results through a rating system.

Back in 2006, Nintendo’s Wii console popularized motion controllers, luring people off the couch to slap an arm with its addicting title Wii Sports. Although there were successful fitness titles on the platform, most gamers quickly found that the basic accelerometer-based motion detection of Wii remotes can be easily performed with short wrist movements rather than full swings and, in many cases, a seated “wiggle.” “The more effective way of playing became.

In VR, fully tracked motion controllers mean that it is impossible (assuming a properly designed game) to “cheat” the system in this way, and players really need to make appropriate movements to be successful in virtual sports and action games to be. Racket: Nx and Rec Room’s Disc Golf are great examples, as similar racket and disc tossing games on the Wii can be easily played while seated with just a slight movement of the wrist. Try that in VR and you will have trouble playing let alone winning something. The games expect and reward physicality, and in any case, the level of immersion in VR is so much higher that gamers are naturally forced to move. Hence, the potential health benefits of VR are likely to be much higher than that of traditional games.

“We created the program after realizing I’d been working in VR for more than a hundred hours without realizing it,” wrote Aaron Stanton, director of the institute, in a message to Road to VR. “We later confirmed through metabolic tests that many VR titles are better calorie burners than conventional treadmills or elliptical trainers. This makes my VR system the best training device I have ever bought. I believe VR has the potential to have life-saving effects on society. That is why we founded the VR Health Institute. “

Image courtesy of the VR Institute of Health and Exercise

The Virtual Reality Institute for Health and Exercise recently started posting its first reviews of a number of popular titles on its website, sorted by Metabolic Equivalent of Task (MET) areas. The VR exercise rating labels are intended to be functionally similar to the ESRB content ratings, thus helping to identify the potential health benefits of a particular title at a glance. The institute suggests that VR games can be especially effective because they force you to play, which means users end up doing significant exercises without even thinking about it.

Some of the results are surprising; The relaxed painting app Tilt Brush is apparently a similar calorie burner to the intense shooter Raw Data. Both are in the walking equivalent range and burn around 2 to 4 calories per minute. Then there’s the boxing game Knockout League, which is rated in the 8-10 calories per minute range, but Thrill of the Fight is by far the highest calorie burner at 15 calories per minute, although it’s a boxing title too, albeit a higher realistic one . In this MET area, Thrill of the Fight is located in the “Sprint” or “Run up stairs” zone. You might want to consider a sweat-resistant headset cover. Here you can see all the games that the institute measured.