VR FITNESS APPLICATION

Get fit in a new and exciting way

Our client is a fitness club, whose main goal is to promote a healthy lifestyle among people, focusing on young adults. VR fitness classes combine a high level of immersion and a typical set of repetitive activities, making exercise addictive. Especially in a world where we expect results now.

Client

NDA

Sector

Fitness

Services

Spinning bike prototype

VR fitness app

Technology

Unreal Engine

HTC Vive + sensors

Visual results video

Business value

Where the mind goes, the body will follow

Immersive fitness aims to transcend the average workout class. It’s an experience that’s both physical and mental, employing visual and auditory effects. By pushing the boundaries of sensory intake, participants are kept fully engaged, allowing them to reach their fitness potential.

Every single session essentially gamifies your workout, with the aim of transporting mind and body. Allowing you to sustain effort and motivation that you might otherwise struggle with.

It’s now possible to change boring bike hardware into an adventure machine for exploring new worlds or simply competing with others (and yourself).

Challenge

Immersive fitness

Working out can be hard and time-consuming. Most of the time a good workout has to be hard and time-consuming. People have to stay dedicated to achieving their dream body – staying long hours and performing repetitive activities. As we know, this process can sometimes take months or even years.

Unfortunately, we live in an instant culture, where a need for immediate gratification dominates our lifestyle and social behaviors. As a result, not getting abs after a barely finished set of push-ups makes people disappointed and their will power wavers just after a few days.

Our client has been looking for a solution to this tendency investigating the topic of the “gym of the future”. The idea was to add VR elements into existing training – distracting people from physical pain and forcing them to perform better.

There were 3 challenges during the design and development process.

Preparing the most comfortable solution of VR in a gym environment.
Finding the best flexible way to extend existing gym exercises.
Using VR and other hardware to jump to a new level of immersion.
Creating a platform, connecting disciplines into one ecosystem and allowing users to share their records and achievements with other players.

Process and project scope

Scope

Our first prototype was a gym bike project. The game has all the training elements from the gym device. We added a gamification system with a ghost mode, race mode, points run, freerun, or a checkpoints ride. We created two different maps in two graphics and gameplay styles. The upcoming projects will focus on a different set of activities like boxing or martial arts.

Service

The main point of VR fitness is to interact with a piece of equipment while performing activities in the virtual world. Our client provided us with the list of gym equipment, including the model and detailed specifications.

We brought every piece to our office, creating fully functional prototypes – including the location of sensors and extension hardware pack. What’s important, the final product was gym-friendly, making it possible to exercise long hours without a distraction.

Collaboration

Because of the unique nature of the project, we had to prepare a specific close collaboration model during the whole design and development process. We mixed Agile and Scrum, setting a few milestones and meetings with the client every week.

Technology stack

Time to work out

The whole experience was prepared in Unreal Engine for HTC Vive (with additional trackers and sensors). We used Raspberry Pi hardware, and our base gym equipment was Gym Spinning bike hardware.

Unity - the main tool used by 4Experience