Increasing digitization has led to the development of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR).
These technological advancements aim to make the digital world more interactive, immersive, and seamlessly integrated into our daily lives, allowing us to cross boundaries and enter realms previously unthinkable.
VR, in particular, is a computer-generated simulated experience perceived through wearable technology and sensory components. Realistic images and sounds are generated through headsets and projections, creating a virtual environment where people can move around and interact with the virtual items.
The most popular applications of this technology are currently found in video games, virtual meetings, medical training, patient rehabilitation, and military training.
Another interesting and highly beneficial use case of VR has emerged in the fitness industry, where an estimated 1 to 2 million people are working out in VR.
This is of great significance as regular physical activity is essential for maintaining a healthy weight, improving mental health, protecting against chronic conditions, and increasing the overall quality of life.
However, motivation and adherence to exercise continue to be the problem with all kinds of physical exercises.
Companies and scientists expect to change with VR exergaming—a combination of physical exercise with gaming—which holds great promise for incentivizing physical activity. According to Dr. Dominic Potts, the lead author of a new study that aims to leverage sensor technology to keep exercisers motivated:
“With exergaming, we can address this issue and maximize a person’s enjoyment and performance by adapting the challenge level to match a user’s abilities and mood.”
VR Exergaming: The Solution to Better Health
The increasing focus on health and fitness has driven the global VR fitness game market worth about $11.1 billion in 2022, with projections to surpass $16 billion by the end of this decade.
With the help of VR technology, people can exercise and maintain their health right from the comfort of their homes.
Exergaming, or active video gaming, is an emerging trend in which digital games require bodily movement to play, stimulating an active gaming experience. This is why many have also designated it “the future of fitness.”
Compared to conventional exercise, exergames can enhance both performance and enjoyment by distracting users from discomfort as they reach closer to or surpass the ventilatory threshold, immersing them in engaging virtual environments.
For best results, exergames must offer challenges that correspond with the user’s ability, helping them realize the benefits of immersion, performance, and enjoyment. Matching the exergame difficulty to that of the user allows them to achieve a flow state, which is the psychologically optimal state in which a user is focused and engaged.
One way to achieve this is to adjust the exergame difficulty in real-time based on the user’s heart rate.
But there’s another, better way to control the adaptations of exergame and that is to estimate the emotional state of the user during the gameplay. Through affect recognition, which is based on physiological sensor measures, exergames can be adapted for not just difficulty but also in other ways like interactive storytelling. It may even help us better understand the player experience.
However, affect recognition in exergaming is challenging because of the influence of physical exercise and interpersonal differences on emotions and physiological measures.
This calls for the need for emotion-inducing environments, for which researchers have offered solutions. However, they are focused on flow or just how pleasurable it feels (valence). Of course, this is just part of the emotional spectrum and isn’t validated either across different levels of exercise intensity.
Also, physical exertion affects several physiological measures such as movement and perspiration. While affect recognition has been investigated in non-VR exergames, though only at moderate exercise intensities, there hasn’t been a systematic and rigorous comparison of a person’s affective state in VR exergames across various exertion levels besides valence.
Furthermore, there is a need to account for the interpersonal differences, exercise influence, and environmental factors like stimuli when assessing data related to physiological sensors for the same. Removing them from sensor data can increase the generalisability, robustness, and predictive power of affect recognition models, as per the study.
So, the research team from the University of Bath took upon the task of creating exergames that can actually offer a better and more personalized approach for improved results.
Taking a Personalized Approach to VR Exergaming
Supported by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation program and Innovate UK, the latest research has developed exergames that people can adhere to. These games use sensors to continuously measure a person’s emotional state during exercise, adjusting the game in real-time to keep users engaged.
According to Dr. Potts, completely adaptive exercise games sense a person’s emotions and give them obstacles when they’re ready for a challenge and ‘rewards’ when they’re struggling.
The Bath team was successful in developing such personalized exergames by using a new range of sensors that can be put into VR headsets and wearables like smartwatches. These sensors then track the physical changes of the exerciser as they work out.
While sensors can be really effective at tracking our emotional states, they are only when we are inactive and not so much when we are doing any physical activity. This makes it hard to recognize a person’s emotions; are they bored or happy.
This can finally be changed with the new sensors that traditionally have been embedded in VR headsets to track pupil dilation and blinks.
So, Bath scientists got 72 participants for a VR static cycle race. These participants who were primarily staff and students from the University itself included 43 males, 27 females, 1 non-binary, and one ‘other’ with ages between 18-60.
Most of these participants had high physical activity, used VR occasionally, and had also played video games occasionally.
The race took place in four distinct virtual environments with each one designed for a specific emotion i.e. sadness, happiness, calmness, and stress.
A specific combination of sensors was then used to measure facial expressions, pupil size, heart rate, skin inflammation, levels of sweating, and electrodermal activity to check stress levels.
So, as participants went through these virtual environments at low, medium, and high exercise intensities, the researchers collected the data through the sensors.
Each session was 90-minute long for one exercise bout for each intensity level. Meanwhile, the four different emotions were experienced by the participants for sixty seconds each.
The researchers were able to accurately state the emotional state of the user for each workout. With that, they matched the level of difficulty and VE nature with the physiological changes experienced by the user.
Making VR Exercise Emotionally Intelligent
Now, drawing from this research, the scientists have formulated eight guidelines for VR exergame creators in order to enhance the emotional engagement of users.
These recommendations include designing pupil-detecting sensors to correct for luminosity changes in the virtual environment, taking user’s preexisting sweat levels into account to predict stress and arousal of the nervous system, cleaning sensor data before and during the exergame to customize the game for each user, and using multiple physiological sensors to improve predictions regarding the emotional state.
Other recommendations included incorporating power output of the user for improved prediction, avoiding linear regression models for predicting emotions, not using raw data without removing signals not related to emotional changes, and not using blink measures.
The study isn’t without its limitations, though. For instance, it is generalizable only to women, moderately active individuals, and people from a wide age range. The gameplay lasted just 12 minutes, excluding warm-ups and cool-downs, and considered only one exercise type—cycling.
These findings were published at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, where the paper received an honorable mention award. The researchers now hope the study will be adopted by game designers to create immersive programs that keep users exercising long after they would normally choose to quit.
The objective “is to make VR exercise emotionally intelligent” in the long term, said study lead Dr. Christof Lutteroth, director of the University’s REVEAL research center. He also pointed out how VR exercises are already being utilized at the school level as well as in sports science and rehab. He added:
“We fully expect VR physical activity to explode in popularity in the years ahead…so it’s important to focus on making technology that’s emotionally intelligent and adaptive to differences between users.”
In the realm of VR exercising, a lot of progress is currently being made with people sharing their experiences of losing weight with the help of these devices.
Given people’s interest, companies are also taking an active interest. Just last month, Virtuix announced that its Omni One VR treadmill will be released in September for $2,595 (plus shipping) after a decade of being in the works. 30,000 units have already been sold by the company during Omni One VR treadmill’s pre order period.
The startup has also raised a total of $40 million so far via venture capital and individual investment to advance its efforts. The VR treadmill from Virtuix, which is “dedicated to making VR locomotion a reality,” comes at a time when mixed reality is drawing a lot of attention from tech giants like Meta and HTC.
VR fitness games and apps are now also flooding the market. This includes subscription-based FitXR which offers a variety of workouts, Supernatural, and Les Mills BodyCombat.
Research has actually found that exercising using VR for a shorter time is just as beneficial as exercising for a longer period without VR. These studies reported participants to be more alert and happier with significant improvement seen in their emotional state compared to traditional exercise.
With daily movement proven to “help build up resistance, reduce the risk of developing adverse mental well-being and even mental health conditions,” Dr. Brendon Stubbs, an exercise researcher, says, having “an accessible and habit-forming workout” like VR games and exercising apps makes for a great solution.
This isn’t even all, short-term VR exercise along with leisure-oriented immersive VR have also shown to alleviate pain, anxiety, and depression, improve self-perceived health, and increase one’s quality of life.
Click here for a list of maverick companies redefining the AR/VR frontier.
Companies Helping Advancing VR Exercising
A lot of companies are involved in advancing the field of VR exergaming, as we noted above. This includes Apple (AAPL), which has made strides in both VR and AR and is working on integrating fitness features like heart rate tracking and emotional wellness metrics into its devices. Pelton (PTON), known for its fitness equipment, is also exploring VR to enhance user experience. Then there’s Vuzix Corporation (VUZI), which develops smart glasses and wearable display technology, while NVIDIA’s (NVDA) advanced GPU technology powers VR experiences.
Now, let’s take a look at a couple of prominent names in the field:
#1. Meta Platforms (META)
Meta, with its Quest VR division, is a leading player in the development of immersive VR hardware and software. Its Quest VR headsets are used for a variety of activities, including entertainment, travel, design, gaming, and fitness. Immersive workout routines are offered via Supernatural and FitXR.
With a market cap of over $1.3 trillion, Meta shares are currently trading at $515.48, up 46% YTD. For Q2 of 2024, the company reported total revenue of $39.07bln, which is an increase of 22% YoY, while total costs and expenses increased by 7% YoY to $24.22bln. Share repurchases were $6.32bln, while $1.27bln were made in dividend payments. Cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities at the end of the quarter were $58.08bln, and free cash flow was $10.90bln.
#2. Unity Software Inc. (U)
One of the leading platforms for creating VR applications, Unity’s engine has also been used widely by developers to develop interactive and immersive VR experiences in fitness.
With a market cap of over $6.7 billion, Unity shares are currently trading at $16.99, down 58.2% YTD. For Q2 of 2024, the company reported a total revenue of $449 mln, which was a decrease of 16% YoY. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $113 million, while GAAP net loss was $126 million.
“We believe that with better execution, the scale and vibrancy of these markets will enable Unity to earn its place alongside the best-performing companies in the gaming and technology industry.”
– Unity’s CEO
Conclusion
The more our world goes digital, the fewer people will be into exercising. However, scientists and companies have found a solution to this problem. The ongoing integration of virtual reality into exergaming is revolutionizing physical fitness and mental health by making workouts even more engaging and enjoyable.
This isn’t to say there aren’t any challenges to VR exergaming, but studies like the one covered here are addressing these challenges, such as motivation, to ensure better solutions are provided to the public.
So, as VR continues to evolve with advanced emotional recognition, sensor integration, and personalized feedback, it promises to transform not only gaming and entertainment but also health and overall well-being.
Click here for a list of the top 10 AR & VR stocks.
