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I love my Oculus, at least for my use case, exercise, and I highly recommend it. I think exercise is the killer feature of VR, personally. For context: I'm not

by edanm 4y ago

I love my Oculus, at least for my use case, exercise, and I highly recommend it. I think exercise is the killer feature of VR, personally. For context: I'm not much of a gamer. But I was looking for some way to do cardio exercise in my small-ish apartment. I heard from a few people about exercising in VR. so I got the Oculus. And it's been great! There are lots of games that are purely exercise-focused, which I liked a bit. Then there are lots of games which are just games, but that you also can get a workout doing, which I absolutely love. There are enough of them that I think I can keep playing for a while before ever getting bored. I love table tennis, but don't regularly go play anymore cause kids/family/etc, lack of time. But I can put on the headset and be playing an almost completely realistic game of ping pong with an AI or a random important anytime I want, for a quick 5 minute break or for something more. Then there are the other games - games that are actual games. I'm most surprised by this - since I'm not a gamer, I wouldn't have thought I would be drawn to these. But apparently games in VR are just much more fun, or at least much more novel to me - and I've actually found myself using VR to play games without an exercise focus more and more. So to summarize - if you want a way to do some cardio at home, in a relatively small space, without feeling like you're working out - a VR is a great way to do that. And let's face it, most people need to do more cardio. (I'm also very excited for using VR as a workspace, but way more skeptical of this really being a thing.) Edit: Oh, and this is way more out there - but if there is ever a good, affordable omni-directional treadmill thing ala Ready Player One - it will instantly make VR 100x more valuable for exercise, and I think it will be completely transformative.

jfengel 4y ago
Thank you. Doing cardio in VR doesn't cause motion sickness issues? I've got a really strong stomach, and played something on an Oculus for far longer than the device's owner could, but it was still only a half hour and I was getting queasy. I'd like to think it works. I am a runner and I hate treadmills, even with a TV. Something to make it bearable would be a big win on bad weather days.
- edanm 4y ago
  I'm maybe not the best to ask, as I've rarely had any motion sickness issues. But the few times I have, it's been very specific games, and mostly ones in which you're "flying around" or some such. Luckily, that means you can choose games that don't have this issue, and most fitness games are included. E.g. a lot of "fitness" games are like beat saber - you're effectively "standing still" and things are coming to you. Other games allow you to move around a little, but you're still basically "on the ground" and moving around, not flying. So in my experience, it's fairly easy to do 30 minutes of something like Beat Saber, Pistol Whip, or similar games. And way funner to do that than do 30 minutes of just running, at least to me. (Sorry, I'm not much of a runner.) That said, there's a reason for my belief that when a good omnidirectional treadmill hits the market, it will make VR 1000x better. It will make all fitness games instantly much better, and more realistic, and it turn many games that aren't currently fitness games into fitness games by having you walking or running around a lot. An FPS that allows you to actually walk around will instantly be the best game ever, in my mind, but right now there's no way I'm doing that for exercise.

by edanm 4y ago

jfengel 4y ago

Thank you. Doing cardio in VR doesn't cause motion sickness issues? I've got a really strong stomach, and played something on an Oculus for far longer than the device's owner could, but it was still only a half hour and I was getting queasy. I'd like to think it works. I am a runner and I hate treadmills, even with a TV. Something to make it bearable would be a big win on bad weather days.

edanm 4y ago
I'm maybe not the best to ask, as I've rarely had any motion sickness issues. But the few times I have, it's been very specific games, and mostly ones in which you're "flying around" or some such. Luckily, that means you can choose games that don't have this issue, and most fitness games are included. E.g. a lot of "fitness" games are like beat saber - you're effectively "standing still" and things are coming to you. Other games allow you to move around a little, but you're still basically "on the ground" and moving around, not flying. So in my experience, it's fairly easy to do 30 minutes of something like Beat Saber, Pistol Whip, or similar games. And way funner to do that than do 30 minutes of just running, at least to me. (Sorry, I'm not much of a runner.) That said, there's a reason for my belief that when a good omnidirectional treadmill hits the market, it will make VR 1000x better. It will make all fitness games instantly much better, and more realistic, and it turn many games that aren't currently fitness games into fitness games by having you walking or running around a lot. An FPS that allows you to actually walk around will instantly be the best game ever, in my mind, but right now there's no way I'm doing that for exercise.