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VR Fitness Is a Serious Workout, Seriously
In the last days of 2020, Oculus quietly rolled out a fitness tracker, called Oculus Move, that lives inside its Quest headsets. Users who download the software can watch the calories they burn in virtual reality, along with their physically active minutes, climb on a ticker floating above or below their field of view. With a deeper dive into the tracker’s dashboard, they can also set goals and track their progress over time.
Move appears to be an acknowledgment from Oculus that fitness is a primary reason for many people to use VR. That’s certainly the case for me. I’m not much of a gamer in general, but for the past couple months, I’ve exercised nearly every day in virtual reality. And despite what you might think about the incompatibility of video games and exercise, these are serious workouts. Some end with me gasping for breath and wringing sweat from my beard.
In that sense, VR has saved me from bodily neglect. It’s helped me grasp the motivation that’s been threatening to slip through my fingers since the start of this godforsaken pandemic.
During the spring, summer, and fall seasons of COVID, I managed a couple 20-mile bike rides each week. On weekends I occasionally found strength for longer rides, and on one hot Saturday, I logged 100 flat miles on Long Island. But it was always a struggle to get moving, and as winter arrived in New York, my rides petered. After a couple inactive weeks, I decided to see what I could accomplish inside a Quest 2 ($299), the entry-level headset Oculus released in October.
Initially my plan was to use VR for a few minutes of movement on particularly cold days. But then I started building a library of games and programs, some of which I considered warm-ups that helped vault me into more serious cardio. Now, every day, I piece together a workout based on my mood and energy level. Video games are part of my daily routine, and I feel lazy without them.
What does a VR workout look like?
There are dozens of virtual reality programs you can use to burn a few calories, but as of now, there are only a few specifically focused on exercise. By far my favorite is the subscription-based program Supernatural ($19/month, or slightly less for annual memberships).
Workouts typically run 10- to 30-minutes, and they roll out fresh daily. After a quick stretch with a trainer, music kicks on and triangles and targets begin flying toward you. Your job is to squat through the former and smash the latter with the virtual batons in your hands.
It’s simple enough, but the game moves fast, especially with workouts labeled “hard.” You’ll struggle to hold a squat inside a triangle tunnel that forces you to stay low while swinging your arms. Then you’ll explode upward to swat an overhead target, side-lunge left then right to thread the off-kilter scalene triangles, and then attack a dozen more targets before dropping back down into a squat.
The movements burn, but they don’t immediately register as exercise. Not in the strictest sense, anyway, because Supernatural feels more like a sport than a workout. You run your score up by hitting targets, and with more powerful swings, you amass more points. You can track your progress on a leaderboard, and if you want to jump the person ahead of you, you’ll either have to work harder or longer.
To help break the monotony of exercise, each workout takes you around the world. You might start out on an arctic tundra, move to the edge of an Egyptian pyramid, and then end on the lip of a volcano in Ethiopia.
And each location pairs with a new song, which dictates the intensity of the workout. Supernatural invests heavily in licensing fees, and its programmers have delightfully diverse tastes. I’ve worked out to hip-hop, Southern rock, top 40. Some particularly motivating tracks have come from the New York Dolls, Violent Femmes, Kendrick Lamar, and one Skrillex track that threatened to detach my arms from my body.
The other program I use often is FitXR ($29.99), which fills my urge for head-to-head competition. With each workout, six other VR users join me. They appear as silhouettes to my left and right, and I do everything I can to make sure I score more points than they do.
FitXR workouts come with less novelty than Supernatural’s—there are only two environments, and the music isn’t anything I recognize. But it does offer workout variety, with either boxing or cardio dance classes. I prefer the former, which much like Supernatural, functions with moving targets set to the beat. Only this time, you’ll have to toggle between jabs, crosses, hooks, and uppercuts, depending on the target.
A streak counter tells you how many consecutive targets you’ve hit, and a power meter gives you a real-time score on each punch. Both metrics—accuracy and power—play into your position on the leaderboard.
The cumulative effect of scorekeeping and instant feedback available in both Supernatural and FitXR amount to what researchers call gamification. “You’re earning awards and leveling up,” says Tumay Tunur, Ph.D., a kinesiologist who studies virtual reality at California State University San Marcos. “It’s very rewarding, and it definitely helps with adherence.”
Consistency, says Tunur, is the most critical component of any workout routine. And that’s what makes gamification potent: It gives you goals that numb the pain, and it keeps you coming back for more.
Tunur’s VR fitness game of choice is the rhythm-based Beat Saber ($29). “When I play, I’ll say, ‘I’m gonna go in for 20 minutes to get a quick workout,’” she says. “Then 40 minutes later, I’m still playing.”
I can relate. When I’m feeling lethargic, I delay my serious workout by playing a first-person shooter like Pistol Whip ($24.99) or scaling cliffs in The Climb ($29.99). Both games get my blood pumping, and after a couple rounds, I’m eager to log in to Supernatural or FitXR.
According to Oculus Move, the built-in tracker, I’m burning 200-400 calories per workout, and in one 49-minute session, I clocked 549. I suspect the numbers are inflated, however. I’ve worn both Garmin and Fitbit trackers during my VR workouts, and they registered 24 percent and 35 percent lower, respectively.
But I don’t particularly care about calories. The more important metric for me is exertion, and the trackers told me I was keeping my average heart rate close to 130, with a peak near 170. Those are legitimate numbers, and they provide context for research on VR fitness.
Last year, kinesiologists at the University of Minnesota reviewed 15 studies on the subject. Among those that looked at physical outcomes such as body composition, fitness level, and muscular strength, two-thirds showed positive results from VR workouts. And that’s despite relatively short study periods and outdated technology. (The oldest study in the analysis is from 2003, which is ancient in tech years.)
But perhaps the more interesting finding comes from the studies that looked at VR’s psychological effects. According to the research, virtual workouts can reduce fatigue and symptoms of depression.
Again, I can relate. Virtual reality isn’t reality, but it does transport me somewhere outside my apartment. That’s valuable given that my local restaurants, bars, and gyms are all inaccessible due to the pandemic. VR is a small bright spot—a healthy one, at that—in what could otherwise feel like a yearlong, pandemic-induced Groundhog Day.
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Virtual workouts and the future
If you’ve been paying attention to VR, then you’ve been hearing for a decade that Oculus was on the verge of making the technology mainstream. So what’s different about now? That’s easy: Accessibility.
Until recently, affordable consoles were just plastic or cardboard holsters that strapped a smartphone to your head. There wasn’t much you could do with them. And even today, high-end goggles require cables to keep you tethered to an expensive gaming computer.
The Oculus Quest, released in 2019, was the first to bridge the divide. It was wireless and had a $399 price tag. It wasn’t cheap, but it wasn’t four-figures expensive, either. And 17 months later, Oculus released the Quest 2, an update that improved significantly on the visuals (frame rate and resolution are both higher), weight (it clocks in at just over one pound), and price ($299). It stands to reason that as the technology continues to improve, so will the fitness applications.
My one overarching complaint of the Quest 2 comes not from Oculus, but from its parent company, Facebook. With the second-generation console, the social-media company began requiring its virtual-reality users to log in using a Facebook profile.
That probably won’t phase the site’s billions of active users, but I deleted my account a couple years ago. Facebook found a way to force me back on, and the strong-arm mandate confirms my suspicion that it cares more about harvesting my data than winning me back as a loyal customer.
Regardless, VR fitness has officially landed, and I’d wager that goggles will soon be as common as treadmills.
Consider Holodia, a company that began making VR workout software in 2018. Originally, Holodia targeted gyms with virtual jungles and rivers that members could accelerate through using rowing machines, ellipticals, and exercise bikes. But in January, Holodia launched a subscription-based program for the Quest 2, presumably to jump on the at-home VR fitness trend.
Users can run the program, called Holofit ($10.75/month, less for longer memberships), using smart rowing machines or bikes and ellipticals with cadence sensors attached. But more tellingly, they can now also run it by doing crunches or jogging in place—no heavy equipment required.
That seems to provide a clue to where VR fitness is headed. While it began as a novelty, it’s now capable of serving as the centerpiece to your home gym. It costs less, takes up less space, and incentives you with game-like elements and daily updates.
Truth is, I don’t always feel like working out. But these days, I’m always down for a break from reality. It’s wonderful that VR can offer both.
This content was originally published here.
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Big Tech And White House Staff Working Hard To Manipulate Online Response To Favor Of Biden
(TeaParty.org Exclusive) – Americans aren’t buying the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s presidency. This isn’t like in 2016 when the Democrats whined and cried about President Trump colluding with Russia to steal the presidency.
There just wasn’t proof of that. It didn’t add up. It didn’t make sense. There was literally no reason at all to believe that President Trump had teamed up with Putin to defraud the American people and steal the election.
He didn’t need to. He had plenty of support and he won the election fair and square. Just like he won the 2020 election. President Trump had far greater support than Joe Biden and it was obvious and undeniable.
Yet, somehow, Joe Biden became the most voted for president in US history with 81 votes beating both the wildly popular Obama and Trump. Biden also managed to do this without winning the states of Florida and Georgia and without earning over 90 percent of the black vote, which has always been a must for any Democratic president to win.
There were so many election anomalies and irregularities and the American people plainly saw it. Now that Biden is in the White House the Democrats expect all talk of a fraudulent election to cease and desist.
Only problem is, they carried on with the phony Russian collusion hoax for President Trump’s entire four years in office. There is no reason for anyone in Washington DC to expect Trump supporters to just let it go when it comes to the stolen 2020 election.
Nonetheless, those in power don’t wish to hear from the American people. Online responses to Joe Biden’s virtual inauguration ceremony were overwhelmingly negative. This has led to White House officials to take action.
The Daily Wire reports a YouTube video of Biden’s inauguration had been disabled for comments though users could still give the content a thumbs up or thumbs down.
The comments appeared to have been enabled again at some point which resulted in around 1,000 people commenting, most of which were negative and the video received five times as many thumbs down responses as it did thumbs up.
Every tweet so far on his page has 70 to 80% negative comments. On the official White House YouTube page every video he has put out has 80% more dislikes than likes. Nobody voted for this guy. Maybe the people at the Capitol may have been right?
pic.twitter.com/509UC2GgTD
— Crip (@Crip56844525) January 23, 2021
The White House turned off the comments on today’s press briefing on their YouTube channel. Before they did, I had one of the top thumbed-up comments saying “In before they turn off the comments.” Yes, I can predict the future.
pic.twitter.com/8yJevD46At
— Mark Dice (@MarkDice) January 22, 2021
“When he says, ‘I really believe it,’ is he trying to convince himself or us? When he says, ‘I’m not joking,’ did he think it would sound like he was?” one user wrote. “The only disrespect of the last four years came from the news media, not Donald Trump.”
“Say Hi before they silence your comments… welcome to 1984. The purge is underway,” wrote another user in reference to author George Orwell’s 1940s-era classic about a big-government dystopian future that now appears to be upon us.
The Gateway Pundit reports that after just three days in office, the Biden administration has disabled comments on all thirteen videos posted to the official White House YouTube channel and erased thousands of comments too.
The American people have provided a relentless onslaught of negativity on the White House channel, so much so that YouTube got involved and began manipulating downvotes to make Biden appear more popular.
Despite YouTube removing tons of downvotes, they still greatly outnumber the upvotes. How funny that even now that Biden is in office, he still needs votes manipulated in his favor.
The American people aren’t stupid and we aren’t buying this charade of a presidency. We know the Democrats engaged in massive collusion with state and local officials in critical swing states to pull off the biggest election theft in the world.
Copyright 2021. TeaParty.org
This content was originally published here.
The Women in Tech Initiative at UC is proud to announce the fifth annual Athena Award winners. Sponsored by CITRIS and the Banatao Institute and Berkeley Engineering, the awards recognize those who embody, encourage, and promote the inclusion of women in technology.
Nominations opened in fall 2020 and submissions covered a wide range of expertise and accomplishments. Awardees were selected by a distinguished panel of representatives from academia and industry. It was a highly competitive process and we thank everyone who submitted a nomination. The awards will be presented on March 12, 2021, during the annual Women in Tech Symposium. This year’s symposium will focus on “The New Era in Human-Computer Interaction” and will examine leading-edge technologies and challenges to ensuring equitable and inclusive HCI.
This year’s Athena Award winners include UC Merced Professor Teenie Matlock, World Economic Forum’s Sheila Warren, UC Davis Assistant Professor Katia Cánepa Vega, and the nonprofit organization Self e-STEM.
Academic Leadership:
Teenie Matlock, Ph.D.
Professor, Vice Provost for Academic Personnel, and McClatchy Chair in Communications at UC Merced
@TeenieMatlock
Teenie Matlock is the Vice Provost for Academic Personnel and a professor of Cognitive Science at UC Merced. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and has been awarded over $2M in extramural research funding. Matlock pioneered human-computer interaction research in the early 2000s, well before the ubiquity of attentive systems, and continues to push the boundaries of language processing through a deeper understanding of human communication. She is notably transdisciplinary in her approaches, meshing research across cognitive linguistics, experimental psychology, and human-computer interaction. At UC Merced, Matlock has broken down academic hierarchies and spearheaded an effort to hire new faculty using innovative approaches to inclusivity, and initiated the institutional membership to the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity. Her commitment to guide women to succeed in technology is reflected through the expanded career opportunities she has opened for her mentees. Her mentorship has led to her mentees’ acceptance to top graduate programs, obtaining tenure-track positions, achieving tenure, or landing competitive positions in the technology industry.
Matlock is one of the few Native American faculty in the University of California system and served as Vice Chair of the American Indian Council of Mariposa. She continues to build community by inviting Native American Miwok tribal leaders to open lectures that focus on tribal rights and to honor the location of UC Merced on ancestral lands. Annually, she has served as a liaison to the local communities surrounding UC Merced through various outreach and engagement events. Beyond being a top scholar in her field, Matlock is also a musician and participates in the Merced Community Jazz Band as a solo trumpet player.
Executive Leadership:
Sheila Warren
Head of Blockchain, Digital Assets, and Data Policy at the World Economic Forum
@sheila_warren
Sheila Warren is the Head of Blockchain, Digital Assets, and Data Policy at the World Economic Forum (WEF). Sheila’s focus on building solutions to real-world problems has helped shape the space of blockchain technology and digital identity. Her first technical contribution was the 2013 launch of NGOsource, a first-of-its-kind SaaS product that focused on international grantmaking and revolutionized the way diligence in the sector is conducted using algorithms and blockchain technology. At the WEF she oversaw the development of the first proof-of-concept to combat corruption in public procurement. She has become one of the most influential women in blockchain. Her co-authored paper “Blockchain Beyond the Hype” is the most downloaded WEF paper of the decade. She has provided testimony to the EU and UK Parliament, served on high-level advisory boards for the OECD, World Bank, California government, and several critical projects. Her insistence on inclusion and problem solving has already shaped the trajectory of this technology, and she conceived of and oversaw the creation of the world’s first comprehensive guides to central bank digital currencies and blockchain for the supply chain. The Presidio Principles, which launched under her leadership, are the first ethical framework for blockchain technology.
Sheila’s current team is staffed entirely by women, a rare representation in the field of blockchain. As a leader, she does not hide her personal responsibilities. She emphasizes new models of leadership and flexible work that better accommodate the realities of modern life. Her openness about being a mother of young children and the complexities of work-life balance are inspiring the next generation of women leaders in technology.
Early Career:
Katia Cánepa Vega
Assistant Professor, Department of Design at UC Davis
@kfcito
Katia Vega is an Assistant Professor at the UC Davis Department of Design and directs the Interactive Organisms Lab. Katia’s pioneering research creates novel interfaces around the skin and within fungal colonies known as Beauty Technologies, Growable Interfaces, and Interactive Tattoos. This research integrates electronics into cosmetics to be applied directly to skin, fingernails, and hair to transform the body’s surface into an interactive platform. Her work in Beauty Technology (a term she introduced in 2012) helped open a field with innovations like Conductive Makeup, Tech Nails, Hairware, and FX e-makeup. Katia’s research helped open a new subfield in Wearable Computing by transforming the body into an interactive platform. Her work has been featured by the BBC, New Scientist, Wired, Discovery, CNN, and has received awards from SXSW, Ars Electronica, and the Ubimedia Competition, among others. She is the co-author of the book, “Beauty Technology: Designing Seamless Interfaces for Wearable Computing.”
As a Geek Girl LatAm Ambassador, Katia has a marked impact in encouraging Latina and female students to undertake STEAM disciplines. Seventy percent of the undergraduate students joining her lab have been women, and many come from outside the US (Peru, China, Taiwan, Turkey). Her design is women-centered, creating novel beauty technologies that are mindful of the social, aesthetic, and cultural perspective of women, and she positions women as innovation drivers.
Next Generation Engagement:
Self e-STEM
@selfestemorg
Self-eSTEM provides interactive, culturally responsive STEM literacy, leadership, and technical training for girls and young women. Self-eSTEM focuses on building the skills, confidence, and resiliency needed for the STEM workforce of the future. The organization helps young women visualize themselves as STEM educators, engineers, programmers, and future industry leaders and mentors. The program model is designed to scale culturally-relevant content for educators and provide participant support at core developmental stages: childhood, emerging adulthood, and early career. The Self-eSTEM team is recruited from the community they serve and shares the experiences and background of their constituents. Since 2014, Self-eSTEM has served over 1,200 girls and helped them realize their education and career pursuits.
Recently, Self-eSTEM launched a STEM Equity and Racial Justice Pledge as a direct response to our nation’s racial and gender challenges. It reflects a direct approach toward dismantling the systemic inequality and racism within STEM education and career pathways. The free program provides wraparound support and culturally relevant content to increase recruitment and retention of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) populations in the STEM talent pipeline.
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The Women in Technology Initiative at the University of California is a program jointly launched in 2017 by CITRIS and the Banatao Institute and Berkeley Engineering to advocate for women in the tech industry and academia to be proportionately represented and equitably compensated throughout the professional ranks.
The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute drive interdisciplinary innovation for social good with faculty researchers and students from four University of California campuses – Berkeley, Davis, Merced, and Santa Cruz – along with public and private partners.
The post 2021 Women in Tech Initiative Athena Award Winners Announced appeared first on CITRIS and the Banatao Institute.
This content was originally published here.
In terms of connectivity, the Mi Curved Gaming Monitor 34 has two HDMI 2.0b and two DisplayPort 1.4 ports, along with a 3.5mm option. The ports are accessible without too much of a hassle, and there is a shroud that hides the port enclosure.
The Mi Curved Gaming Monitor 34 has a 3440 x 1440 resolution and 21:9 ratio, and the 1500R curvature is ideal; it ensures the monitor doesn’t take up too much room, but you don’t notice any issues when gaming or reading text on the screen. The 300nit brightness is also decent, and coming from a Dell monitor that went up to 350 nits, I never had any issues in this particular area.
The Samsung VA panel is one of the best in this category, and the monitor is ideal for gaming.
The screen has a matte coating to prevent glare, and colors look great out of the box. Of course, you can always calibrate the monitor to set it up to your preferences, but if you don’t want to do so, know that the panel itself has a lot going for it. Colors are accurate, you get great contrast levels, and backlighting is even. The monitor uses a Samsung VA panel — like most other options in this category — and the 4ms response time is perfectly serviceable for most titles.
Before switching to the Mi Curved Gaming Monitor 34, I used a 25-inch QHD monitor. With the added screen real estate, I was easily able to run three windows side-by-side. Having used the monitor for just under four months, I’m fully onboard the ultrawide bandwagon. It genuinely makes a tangible difference in my day-to-day use, and I don’t have to deal with the hassle of using multiple monitors.
The monitor holds up just fine for viewing videos and movies, but know that most 16:9 content will show bars on the sides. As for gaming, I played over a dozen games over the last four months, and titles like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Monster Hunter: World, Horizon Zero Dawn, and other AAA games look fantastic on the monitor.
I used the monitor with a gaming machine featuring a Core i9-10900K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 — and then upgraded to a RTX 3080 — and while it lacks G-Sync, I was able to get up to 120fps in a few titles without any issues. But your mileage may vary based on the game.
Xiaomi Mi Curved Gaming Monitor 34 What I don’t like
This content was originally published here.
Stash app – the tool to manage your finances, with all the tools to upgrade them
Big Tech And White House Staff Working Hard To Manipulate Online Response To Favor Of Biden
