
Show HN: Getting fit in virtual reality with open source and Godot - blensor
https://vrworkout.at
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blensor
This is best described as a fitness rhythm game closely losely a circle gym or
a calisthenics workout.

During the last months, and due to the need to find a way to motivate myself
to exercise more while staying at home, I developed my hand tracking fitness
experiment for the Oculus Quest into a relatively feature complete (at least
for a v1.0) workout game with exercises for the core, legs and arms and custom
song support.

For PC VR it supports VIVE trackers or otherwise "simply" strapping the
controllers to the wrists

It is developed with the Godot engine which has come quite a long way since
the VR support has been introduced.

Kudos to the Godot developers and especially Holger Dammertz for his
relentless work on the Godot Oculus Mobile plugin

The game is opensource (although the code is still a mess) and also free on
Steam or Sidequest

The best part of writing this was and is the feedback of others who are using
it and getting a health benefit out of it.

~~~
stephen_cagle
This is cool. I own a older rift 2 (the kind with the actual trackers).

I was wondering if anyone has figured out how to put some sort of stickers on
kettlebells or dumbbells that would allow for outside tracking? I think it
would be pretty nice if it could show me a guided line of how I should move a
weight through space, and then just let me attempt to move it through said
line.

I think it would also be neat for tracking your actual sets and reps and
basically acting as a personal instructor in terms of keeping you focused.

~~~
zeta0134
For the Vive series, there are external trackers that can simply be attached
to any object:

[https://www.vive.com/us/accessory/vive-
tracker/](https://www.vive.com/us/accessory/vive-tracker/)

These obviously require some way to fix the tracker to the object, but
otherwise I don't see any technical reason it couldn't be done.

The more practical issue is simply that you're now moving a heavy object
without being able to visibly see where it is relative to yourself, the real
floor, or any stationary objects in the room. If you drop it, or anything at
all glitches with the tracking, it's a safety risk. I agree with the other
commenters here; I'd wait to even attempt this until we have something closer
to real consumer AR. The restricted visibility in current VR is not worth
taking that chance.

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monksy
It's a shame that playstation tries to wall off their development support.
This would be great on the PSVR.

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mshumi
Awesome! I've seen hackathon implementations of this idea, but yours is the
best I've found so far. I'm curious about automatic activity recognition. Will
be interesting to train a classifier on head and hand pose to count sit ups or
pushups automatically. Might hack around with this later in the month. Thanks
for MIT licensing it!!!

~~~
blensor
Thank you, I am glad that you like it. In the beginning I was thinking about
recognizing the exercises but after a while I got comfortable with the motion
being driven by the hand and head cues and it being just in between a game and
a plain exercise. The cues that are flying at you are just enough distraction
from the work you are doing that it pushes the motivation a bit but not enough
to be too distracting since you still have to focus on the motions to not hurt
yourself.

I do still intend to add some "intelligence" into it to at least track the
form of the exercise but that is far down the roadmap

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subhashp
Great work! I always think how we can help senior citizens to simple
stretching and fitness exercises at home.

One challenge for them would be to wear the headset, because it may be heavy
or cumbersome.

I am sure something can be worked out ...

~~~
CaptArmchair
Some food for thought here!

I feel that the biggest challenge is this: What question is VR trying to
answer in this regard? What problem does this solve?

What are the impediments that keep seniors from exercising? Is the fitness
market too much geared towards young bodies? Is it solving a mental hurdle to
get them to exercise? Which hurdle is this? A fear of confronting the
increased risk of injury? Re-connecting with (younger) people? Is it about the
cost of entry? What kind of senior are you targetting? At 70, you'll have very
fit seniors, and you'll have people dealing with a wide variety of health
issues. What about price and affordability? What are alternatives that don't
involve complex technology?

So, what does VR do? It's a medium. But like any medium, the real value is in
the content you offer, and you need to keep that content fresh and engaging.
How are you going to differentiate from personal trainers on DVD, television,
YouTube,...?

My PT taught me a ton of simple exercises after a bad injury. There's a ton
you can do with a simple elastic band and your own body weight. The most
important part is to get into a routine and turn it into a habit. So, the
technology shouldn't be detracting attention away from the exercise itself.

Motivation is the biggest challenge. You remember Nintendo's Wii Fit? It was
awesome! Nobody uses it / talks about it anymore. That's part of the problem:
there's always current tech and the expectation of the "next big thing" that
draws attention away. Whereas doing exercises in later life is a sustained
habit you hope to teach people across multiple years, exceeding the shelf life
of technology.

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MuffinFlavored
Tracks your running speed in a 4 square meter area? Running in place?

~~~
blensor
Ah, yes. While the Quest is wireless it still would be a short run :) It's
similar to the knee high running exercise one can do when running in place but
I can't track that yet.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
Running with VR would be horrible with current tech. You have the headset
bouncing around and getting full of sweat. Not to mention tripping over the
real world. If you want to go for a run, go for a real run. VR is better for
light exercise, beatsaber is as far as you would want to go.

~~~
blensor
Well, I have been doing my workout in VR for the past 6 months. So far I am
quite happy with it, which is why I continued developing this. It definitely
might not be for everyone but the feedback I have gotten so far is really
positive.

