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Semi-related, I just got a $400 Oculus Quest and burned 1900 calories playing Beat Saber yesterday (as calculated by Apple Watch's "Other" workout type). Much

Semi-related, I just got a $400 Oculus Quest and burned 1900 calories playing Beat Saber yesterday (as calculated by Apple Watch's "Other" workout type). Much cheaper purchase and fun enough that I can enjoy playing it for hours a day. I have an (admittedly shitty) exercise bike, and will probably be using that a lot less now. If anyone's looking for a home fitness gadget, give that a look. I'm told BoxVR is a better workout than Beat Saber but I haven't bought that yet.

mrguyorama 7y ago
>I just got a $400 Oculus Quest and burned 1900 calories playing Beat Saber That's an absurd claim by your apple watch. An hour of expert level beat saber is closer to 360 calories.
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  I have a hunch that it's overestimating because you wave your arms around a lot, but 360 seems like an underestimate. Average heart rate in 70% to 80% range, and I'll have higher than average calorie expenditure because I'm overweight. EDIT - did a comparison against Runner's World's calorie burn calculator, and the calories/hour burn rate lines up with a leisurely 11:30 minutes/mile pace based on my weight. It honestly seems about right.
- corey_moncure 7y ago
  https://vrhealth.institute/portfolio/beat-saber/ https://vrhealth.institute/portfolio/beat-saber/ This source puts 6 Kcal/min on the low end of the range for an idealized 60 Kg individual, but your estimate is close. tl:dr; 6-8 Kcal/min (360-480 Kcal/hour) for a 60 Kg individual
__comrade__ 7y ago
You burn 1900 calories running 2/3 of a marathon. I hardly think you were able to achieve that in an hour playing a VR game.
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  More than two hours. Looking at the Runner's World calculator for a comparison: Inputs are: 1 mile, 11:30 minutes/mile, 210 lbs weight Gives back 159 calories for a 1 mile run, 829 calories per hour. My Beat Saber workouts yesterday tally up at 830 calories per hour and the amount of sweating felt in the ballpark of running an 11 minute mile. I don't think the watch's estimates are that outlandish. https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a20801301/calories-burned-running-calculator/ https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a20801301/calories-bur... Again factoring in that I weigh 210 lbs, their calculator also says a marathon would be upwards of 4100 calories for me. 1900 calories clocks in at less than half of a marathon.
  - jmull 7y ago
    It’s certainly possible to burn 800+ calories per hour for a couple hours. Normal, actually, for someone doing athletic training. (E.g., anyone training semi-seriously for any kind road race is doing this at least once a week.) But I’d pretty surprised if you did it without training to build up to it. You could have developed the aerobic capacity through other activities, but I’d have thought various muscles would be unprepared and would be giving you rather strong pain signals. If you nevertheless pushed through that, I’d think you’d be SORE AF today and barely able to move. Or maybe your activity confused the calorie model your Apple Watch uses. Not that it isn’t great exercise.
    - wlesieutre 7y ago
      I exercise bike pretty much daily (typically 30-60 minutes), so my arms are flimsy but in terms of cardio capacity I'm not in awful shape. My arms are definitely sore today.
  - bogomipz 7y ago
    That's apples to oranges. A regular runner who runs a few times a week could do 11:30 minute miles just fine. Someone who just started running would have much difficulty doing an 11:30 mile period let alone sustaining that pace for two hours.
  - 7y ago
rchaud 7y ago
1lb of fat is approx 3500 calories. How realistic is it that you dropped over half a pound of fat playing a VR game?
- makomk 7y ago
  It's not realistic to expect the amount of fat lost from any kind of exercise to be anywhere near the total amount of calories expended, though. There are biological limits to fat metabolism that just can't be avoided.
- mikeryan 7y ago
  That’s not how it works.
ygjb 7y ago
Everyone else is saying how absurd the 1900 calorie claim is, and comparing it to other types of exercise, but even if it is the much lower 360 calories, most sedentary gamers are more likely to do this multiple times per week than say, run a marathon, or even start doing a program like C25K. That's a huge win in my book...
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  I mentioned in other comments (and edited a bit with more accurate numbers), but I'll put it here too: the watch worked it out to 830 calories/hour and Runner's World says that's equivalent to me running at 11:30 minutes/mile based on my 210 lbs weight. I've only gone running once this spring so I don't have a huge dataset (lots of walking and exercise bike instead), but the one run I did was a 10:30 mile. So I'm not especially fast, but 11:30 is a slow pace for me and feels reasonable as a beat saber equivalent workout. Downside, the Quest's foam face-interface gets absolutely drenched in sweat. I need to get a sweatband and a wipeable pad replacement as soon as VRCover catches up on their backorders. Even as an exercise bike owner who can hop on that for a workout whenever I want to, I've never gotten home from work and said "You know what I want to do? Exercise bike for more than two hours." Compared to half an hour of exercise bike and two hours of Overwatch, I think this will be a huge deal for fitness.
bogomipz 7y ago
Genuinely curious - how long of a session is required to burn those 1900 calories?
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  That was split over three sessions totaling 2:17, and is for me being 5' 10" and around 210 lbs. If you're skinnier than me you'll probably burn less. It was a good chunk of my evening and my arms are pretty sore today, so I don't plan on doing that all the time. But I'll absolutely do it more often than I run/bike 1900 calories.
ceejayoz 7y ago
I've been playing "Space Pirate Trainer" on my new Quest and was shocked at how worked-out my legs felt afterwards from dodging incoming shots by squatting/leaning.
- jstarfish 7y ago
  I had similar results with "Police 911" in the arcade in the early 2000s. Fun times!
gamblor956 7y ago
That must have been a lot of Beat Saber...running a half marathon (13.1 miles) burns fewer calories than that.
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  I broke this down in another comment, but trusting Runner's World for a calorie calculator, a half marathon would take me 2080 calories (at 210 lbs). So a little bit less than that. Average calorie burn was 830 calories/hour, which they say is equivalent to me running at an 11:30 minutes/mile pace. In terms of effort expended, important to note that this was three sessions over the course of the evening, adding up to 1900 calories and 2 hours 17 minutes. So it was something like running 4 miles 3 times with an hour and change break in between, which is probably an easier feat than doing it in one shot. My arms are still sore and I don't plan on doing that every day, but it was definitely a workout.
rubicon33 7y ago
Can confirm - BoxVR is a killer workout if you take it seriously. Of course, you can cheat and barely bunch to register a punch.
saagarjha 7y ago
> as calculated by Apple Watch's "Other" workout type I don't trust that at all. Apple Watch will give you several "active" calories a minute sitting still if you start an "Other" workout.

mrguyorama 7y ago

>I just got a $400 Oculus Quest and burned 1900 calories playing Beat Saber That's an absurd claim by your apple watch. An hour of expert level beat saber is closer to 360 calories.

wlesieutre 7y ago
I have a hunch that it's overestimating because you wave your arms around a lot, but 360 seems like an underestimate. Average heart rate in 70% to 80% range, and I'll have higher than average calorie expenditure because I'm overweight. EDIT - did a comparison against Runner's World's calorie burn calculator, and the calories/hour burn rate lines up with a leisurely 11:30 minutes/mile pace based on my weight. It honestly seems about right.
corey_moncure 7y ago
https://vrhealth.institute/portfolio/beat-saber/ https://vrhealth.institute/portfolio/beat-saber/ This source puts 6 Kcal/min on the low end of the range for an idealized 60 Kg individual, but your estimate is close. tl:dr; 6-8 Kcal/min (360-480 Kcal/hour) for a 60 Kg individual

__comrade__ 7y ago

You burn 1900 calories running 2/3 of a marathon. I hardly think you were able to achieve that in an hour playing a VR game.

wlesieutre 7y ago
More than two hours. Looking at the Runner's World calculator for a comparison: Inputs are: 1 mile, 11:30 minutes/mile, 210 lbs weight Gives back 159 calories for a 1 mile run, 829 calories per hour. My Beat Saber workouts yesterday tally up at 830 calories per hour and the amount of sweating felt in the ballpark of running an 11 minute mile. I don't think the watch's estimates are that outlandish. https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a20801301/calories-burned-running-calculator/ https://www.runnersworld.com/training/a20801301/calories-bur... Again factoring in that I weigh 210 lbs, their calculator also says a marathon would be upwards of 4100 calories for me. 1900 calories clocks in at less than half of a marathon.
- jmull 7y ago
  It’s certainly possible to burn 800+ calories per hour for a couple hours. Normal, actually, for someone doing athletic training. (E.g., anyone training semi-seriously for any kind road race is doing this at least once a week.) But I’d pretty surprised if you did it without training to build up to it. You could have developed the aerobic capacity through other activities, but I’d have thought various muscles would be unprepared and would be giving you rather strong pain signals. If you nevertheless pushed through that, I’d think you’d be SORE AF today and barely able to move. Or maybe your activity confused the calorie model your Apple Watch uses. Not that it isn’t great exercise.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    I exercise bike pretty much daily (typically 30-60 minutes), so my arms are flimsy but in terms of cardio capacity I'm not in awful shape. My arms are definitely sore today.
- bogomipz 7y ago
  That's apples to oranges. A regular runner who runs a few times a week could do 11:30 minute miles just fine. Someone who just started running would have much difficulty doing an 11:30 mile period let alone sustaining that pace for two hours.
- 7y ago

rchaud 7y ago

1lb of fat is approx 3500 calories. How realistic is it that you dropped over half a pound of fat playing a VR game?

makomk 7y ago
It's not realistic to expect the amount of fat lost from any kind of exercise to be anywhere near the total amount of calories expended, though. There are biological limits to fat metabolism that just can't be avoided.
mikeryan 7y ago
That’s not how it works.

ygjb 7y ago

Everyone else is saying how absurd the 1900 calorie claim is, and comparing it to other types of exercise, but even if it is the much lower 360 calories, most sedentary gamers are more likely to do this multiple times per week than say, run a marathon, or even start doing a program like C25K. That's a huge win in my book...

wlesieutre 7y ago
I mentioned in other comments (and edited a bit with more accurate numbers), but I'll put it here too: the watch worked it out to 830 calories/hour and Runner's World says that's equivalent to me running at 11:30 minutes/mile based on my 210 lbs weight. I've only gone running once this spring so I don't have a huge dataset (lots of walking and exercise bike instead), but the one run I did was a 10:30 mile. So I'm not especially fast, but 11:30 is a slow pace for me and feels reasonable as a beat saber equivalent workout. Downside, the Quest's foam face-interface gets absolutely drenched in sweat. I need to get a sweatband and a wipeable pad replacement as soon as VRCover catches up on their backorders. Even as an exercise bike owner who can hop on that for a workout whenever I want to, I've never gotten home from work and said "You know what I want to do? Exercise bike for more than two hours." Compared to half an hour of exercise bike and two hours of Overwatch, I think this will be a huge deal for fitness.

bogomipz 7y ago

Genuinely curious - how long of a session is required to burn those 1900 calories?

wlesieutre 7y ago
That was split over three sessions totaling 2:17, and is for me being 5' 10" and around 210 lbs. If you're skinnier than me you'll probably burn less. It was a good chunk of my evening and my arms are pretty sore today, so I don't plan on doing that all the time. But I'll absolutely do it more often than I run/bike 1900 calories.

ceejayoz 7y ago

I've been playing "Space Pirate Trainer" on my new Quest and was shocked at how worked-out my legs felt afterwards from dodging incoming shots by squatting/leaning.

jstarfish 7y ago
I had similar results with "Police 911" in the arcade in the early 2000s. Fun times!

gamblor956 7y ago

That must have been a lot of Beat Saber...running a half marathon (13.1 miles) burns fewer calories than that.

wlesieutre 7y ago
I broke this down in another comment, but trusting Runner's World for a calorie calculator, a half marathon would take me 2080 calories (at 210 lbs). So a little bit less than that. Average calorie burn was 830 calories/hour, which they say is equivalent to me running at an 11:30 minutes/mile pace. In terms of effort expended, important to note that this was three sessions over the course of the evening, adding up to 1900 calories and 2 hours 17 minutes. So it was something like running 4 miles 3 times with an hour and change break in between, which is probably an easier feat than doing it in one shot. My arms are still sore and I don't plan on doing that every day, but it was definitely a workout.

rubicon33 7y ago

Can confirm - BoxVR is a killer workout if you take it seriously. Of course, you can cheat and barely bunch to register a punch.

saagarjha 7y ago

> as calculated by Apple Watch's "Other" workout type I don't trust that at all. Apple Watch will give you several "active" calories a minute sitting still if you start an "Other" workout.