Virtual Reality Can Make Working Out Suck Less

I've been meeting developers for private game demos for years, but VirZOOM is the first company that suggested I bring a towel and a change of clothes.

The Boston-based company is developing an exercise bike designed to work with the leading virtual reality headsets: Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, and Vive. It's a straightforward pitch: working out is hard, and it's hard to force yourself to do it regularly because it's repetitive and boring. VirZOOM wants to change that by transforming what would have been another hour on an exercise bike into a magical pegasus ride, where you're flying through the air, trying to grab coins and get a high score.

After trying it, I'd never choose to play a VirZOOM game over, say, a few more hours with Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, but it beats the hell out of a regular workout, at least in terms of entertainment. Surprisingly, because it engages your whole body in an activity, it's also one of the more natural and comfortable virtual reality experiences I've had yet.

The bike itself will cost $250 when it's released in the first half of 2016. It's light and it folds so you could fit it in a closet or under a bed. It looks like any other bare-bones exercise bike, only there are buttons and triggers on the handles, and magnetic sensors in the guts of the machine that measure your cycling at eight intervals for every rotation.

In the pegasus game, the faster I pedaled, the higher the pegasus flew. My goal was to grab coins or apples or some other kind of video gamey power-up. The more I picked up, the longer I could fly. If I didn't get enough before a meter ran out, game over. Flying in virtual reality while your real body is mostly still makes some people sick. To me, it just feels awkward, but that's not a problem with VirZOOM because you're moving your whole body. The dynamic movement in virtual reality is somewhat matched by real dynamic movement, and that feels better than just sitting passively a chair while crazy virtual things happen in your face. I hope virtual reality developers in general try VirZOOM and learn this lesson.

However, it's still shallow experience compared to any other modern game, and it also looks pretty bad. Despite being built with Unity, a contemporary game engine that produces some beautiful games, the VirZOOM games I played looked like they came straight out of the Nintendo 64, if you're old enough to remember the jagged polygons of that era.

"I think we're somewhere between AAA gaming and workout apps," VirZOOM's director of business development Spencer Honeyman told me. "Our goal is to motivate you to work out and move through this virtual world. The expectations are different, it's not like a first person shooter. It's a health and wellness product and a virtual reality controller."

To that end, VirZOOM will include its own, yet to be revealed data tracking software, but will also connect to your Fitbit, Apple Watch, or quantified self device of your choice. VirZOOM's data tracking is part of the VirZOOM Plus subscription, which will cost $10 a month. In addition to data tracking, the subscription will let play with other people online, and get access to new games on a regular basis, in addition to the five games included at launch.

Hopefully, VirZOOM and other developers make more interesting games than the one I saw.

The best demo, and the only one that didn't involve a horse of some kind, was a simple racing game. The faster I pedalled, the faster the car went, and I could steer by leaning my body in the corresponding direction, which the game could sense thanks to the headset's motion tracking. Also, when I looked in the rear view mirror of the car I saw that I was a dog in this virtual reality, which is always a plus.

This was the most straightforward metaphor for the device, and I had the most fun with it, even though I didn't feel confident leaning all the way to the right or left to make sharp turns.

Leaning off a stationary bike while you're essentially blind to the real world feels odd and dangerous, but VirZOOM assured my that I wouldn't be able to tip the bike over while sitting on it even if I tried. Indeed, the bike felt very stable even when I was brave enough to lean all the way to the right, but I never got quite used to it. I imagine this is something I'd get over after a few hours.

I didn't get much of a workout during the 20 minutes or so I was on the device. I didn't need the towel I brought, but that's probably because the VirZOOM people didn't want every journalist coming through their office that day to stink up the place. I could definitely see how you could break a sweat though, and how it would make using an exercise bike more fun. Even the shitty games I got to try were far more entertaining than, for example, watching CNN on mute at the gym.

More importantly, VirZOOM reinforces what I've long thought to be true about virtual reality in general: it works best when your whole body is engaged in the experience. Much like my favorite virtual reality experience so far, Birdly, VirZOOM makes being in a virtual world feel more natural because your whole body is moving. There's an uncomfortable disconnect that happens when you're flying through space in the Oculus Rift while your physical body is still. VirZOOM doesn't have that problem because your whole body is engaged. That makes for a more comfortable virtual reality experience, and if it burns a few calories in the process, so be it.