Credit to: VR Health Institute
Playing VR fitness games but not sure if you are doing it efficiently? The new VR Health Exercise App from the VR Health Institute will help you. The app is now available in beta for iOS and Android and uses careful research to provide you with accurate data on the fitness progress you are making in your virtual reality games.
According to the VR Health Institute, calorie trackers used for more general fitness goals don’t currently work well with newer exercises. Because of this, the information you get about them may not match the calories you actually burn. The institute conducted “hundreds of hours” of metabolic tests that were specific to VR. This made the app more accurate for calculating calories for individual games.
Another attempt
The free VR Health Exercise app has a few different key features. It can track your heart rate and calories burned while playing VR games and pull data from certain tested games. It can also predict future calorie burns based on your current progress. The app also offers you a list of new games with fitness elements. These also provide the estimated calories burned so you can choose new games based on your goals.
To get the most out of the app, use a Bluetooth heart rate monitor. This gives the app the biometric data it needs to predict calorie consumption related to a game’s score. The formulas used to calculate these statistics were created for VR and AR only and not for a collection system used by other fitness applications. The institute estimates that only around 15 percent of VR games are classified as “medium to strong”. So there is a lot to sift through to find a game that is worthwhile.
Credit to: VR Health Institute
“Without the same virtual reality data, it is difficult to accurately predict calorie consumption based on heart rate,” said Dr. Jimmy Bagley, assistant professor of kinesiology at San Francisco State University, in the announcement. “I think such tools are necessary for VR exercises to continue to grow – to be seen as a common tool for health.”
How exactly do exercises in this system measure? The VR Health Institute groups games according to the closest standard training equivalent. This includes resting, which only burns 1-2 calories per minute. Sprinting, meanwhile, can burn more than 15 per minute. In addition to the title of the game in the app, you can see the closest sporting equivalent. In the case of Beat Saber, for example, it’s tennis.
Developers interested in participating can apply on the official website to have their own game assigned a practice rating. Players who want to learn more can visit the official Discord channel and speak to developers.
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