I totally second this. A couple facts about my own routine:
I’ve been using a Quest 2 for regular (2x-3x weekly) brief exercise sessions for about a year. In combination with occasional (0.5x-1x weekly) traditional strength training routine and some jogging around the park, this is the most fun I’ve ever had exercising and the most consistent that I’ve ever been about it, although I still wish I was doing more.
I use this basic pair of weighted gloves when I play VR, which makes games like Beat Saber much more of a workout! I was initially put off by people talking about how it might be bad to use wrist weights because they could cause injury, but I think this is referring to much weights much heavier than 1lb per hand. In my experience, I haven’t come close to anything that feels dangerous—if you wouldn’t fear for your wrists while dancing and holding a pair of largeish apples, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about from using relatively light weighted gloves. I also got some of this foam-exercise-mat stuff to create a defined space in my garage for exercise and VR, which has been nice.
I use VR games not just as a workout in themselves, but also as a reward to get me to do more ordinary types of exercise. ie, I’ll promise myself “okay—get through this 1-hour r/bodyweightfitness routine, and then you can chill with an interesting non-exercise VR game for a while to cool off, and then play some fun Beat Saber to cap it all off.
VR exercise really is extremely convenient. I live directly across from a park with a nice set of tennis courts, but: Sometimes other people are using the tennis courts! Sometimes it’s dark outside! Sometimes it’s too hot or cold! Sometimes I don’t have anyone who wants to play tennis with me! Sometimes I just don’t feel like going out and doing a bunch of exercise in public! In all those cases, it’s awesome to be able to just do a jam session of Beat Saber in my garage.
And about what games I enjoy:
I totally second Beat Saber, it’s by far my favorite. I’d also recommend the hilarious and engaging Gorn and the boxing game Creed: Rise to Glory for variety. Echo Arena, a multiplayer “Ender’s Game” style zero-gravity ultimate-frisbee game, might also make a decent exercise game although I haven’t put much time into it myself. When you start getting bored of Beat Saber, just get into downloading custom songs and it’ll be tons of fun all over again.
(When you’re wearing weighted gloves, it also turns any game where you’re often holding your hands out into a bit of a weird endurance exercise—archery games like In Death, rock-climbing simulator The Climb, or the slow-motion action game Super Hot. But although this can get tiring for your arm muscles, I’m don’t think it’s really good exercise since it doesn’t get your heart pumping.)
As someone who plays lots of both ordinary videogames and VR games, I think a big misconception among players of non-VR games is that, since VR looks so immersive and all-encompassing (literally a box strapped to your face), it would therefore be extremely addictive. In fact, VR games generally seem much less addictive than normal videogames. VR games tend to be much shorter / smaller in scope than the most popular non-VR games. And the fact that I’m moving around doing things (plus wearing a slightly-uncomfortable headset the whole time) just naturally causes me to want to switch things up and move between different activities more frequently, rather than sitting down in front of a screen where it takes a bit more mental effort to stop playing and get up to do something else.
In light of that fact, and in the name of encouraging you to buy a Quest 2 and use it mostly for exercise, here are a couple of non-exercise VR games that I figure LessWrongers might enjoy (skipping over some popular stuff that already appears on internet best-of-Quest lists). None of these games are more than about 5 hours long, per my point about VR games being mostly short-and-sweet:
A Fisherman’s Tale—a delightful, thoughtful game about recursion and symmetries.
Virtual Virtual Reality—a funny, Portal-2-esque experience that explores different mechanics while touring you through a bunch of comedy skits intelligently parodying different ideas about cyberspace.
(There are also bunch of really fascinating VR games on PC, like “4D Toys” about the physics of 4-dimensional objects, “Hyperbolica” about hyperbolic geometry, and “Paper Beast” (a beautiful game about ecology and physics simulation), which unfortunately don’t run natively on Quest. Instead they require some complicated/finnicky setup to connect to a gaming PC to play.)
Rez Infinite / Tetris Effect—entrancing, relaxing, colorful games with nice music. Nice for taking a short break between workout sections.
Be careful with Hyperbolica—that game can suck you in! (The PC version at least)
Accounting Plus is also really good as a short surrealist story-based game (I think it’s by the same folks who made Rick & Morty, which is a good proxy for if you’ll enjoy its style of humor or not)
I totally second this. A couple facts about my own routine:
I’ve been using a Quest 2 for regular (2x-3x weekly) brief exercise sessions for about a year. In combination with occasional (0.5x-1x weekly) traditional strength training routine and some jogging around the park, this is the most fun I’ve ever had exercising and the most consistent that I’ve ever been about it, although I still wish I was doing more.
I use this basic pair of weighted gloves when I play VR, which makes games like Beat Saber much more of a workout! I was initially put off by people talking about how it might be bad to use wrist weights because they could cause injury, but I think this is referring to much weights much heavier than 1lb per hand. In my experience, I haven’t come close to anything that feels dangerous—if you wouldn’t fear for your wrists while dancing and holding a pair of largeish apples, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about from using relatively light weighted gloves. I also got some of this foam-exercise-mat stuff to create a defined space in my garage for exercise and VR, which has been nice.
I use VR games not just as a workout in themselves, but also as a reward to get me to do more ordinary types of exercise. ie, I’ll promise myself “okay—get through this 1-hour r/bodyweightfitness routine, and then you can chill with an interesting non-exercise VR game for a while to cool off, and then play some fun Beat Saber to cap it all off.
VR exercise really is extremely convenient. I live directly across from a park with a nice set of tennis courts, but: Sometimes other people are using the tennis courts! Sometimes it’s dark outside! Sometimes it’s too hot or cold! Sometimes I don’t have anyone who wants to play tennis with me! Sometimes I just don’t feel like going out and doing a bunch of exercise in public! In all those cases, it’s awesome to be able to just do a jam session of Beat Saber in my garage.
And about what games I enjoy:
I totally second Beat Saber, it’s by far my favorite. I’d also recommend the hilarious and engaging Gorn and the boxing game Creed: Rise to Glory for variety. Echo Arena, a multiplayer “Ender’s Game” style zero-gravity ultimate-frisbee game, might also make a decent exercise game although I haven’t put much time into it myself. When you start getting bored of Beat Saber, just get into downloading custom songs and it’ll be tons of fun all over again.
(When you’re wearing weighted gloves, it also turns any game where you’re often holding your hands out into a bit of a weird endurance exercise—archery games like In Death, rock-climbing simulator The Climb, or the slow-motion action game Super Hot. But although this can get tiring for your arm muscles, I’m don’t think it’s really good exercise since it doesn’t get your heart pumping.)
As someone who plays lots of both ordinary videogames and VR games, I think a big misconception among players of non-VR games is that, since VR looks so immersive and all-encompassing (literally a box strapped to your face), it would therefore be extremely addictive. In fact, VR games generally seem much less addictive than normal videogames. VR games tend to be much shorter / smaller in scope than the most popular non-VR games. And the fact that I’m moving around doing things (plus wearing a slightly-uncomfortable headset the whole time) just naturally causes me to want to switch things up and move between different activities more frequently, rather than sitting down in front of a screen where it takes a bit more mental effort to stop playing and get up to do something else.
In light of that fact, and in the name of encouraging you to buy a Quest 2 and use it mostly for exercise, here are a couple of non-exercise VR games that I figure LessWrongers might enjoy (skipping over some popular stuff that already appears on internet best-of-Quest lists). None of these games are more than about 5 hours long, per my point about VR games being mostly short-and-sweet:
A Fisherman’s Tale—a delightful, thoughtful game about recursion and symmetries.
Shadow Point—if you, like me, are in love with Braid and The Witness, Shadow Point feels a little like a VR fan-game inspired by those games’ aesthetic.
Virtual Virtual Reality—a funny, Portal-2-esque experience that explores different mechanics while touring you through a bunch of comedy skits intelligently parodying different ideas about cyberspace.
(There are also bunch of really fascinating VR games on PC, like “4D Toys” about the physics of 4-dimensional objects, “Hyperbolica” about hyperbolic geometry, and “Paper Beast” (a beautiful game about ecology and physics simulation), which unfortunately don’t run natively on Quest. Instead they require some complicated/finnicky setup to connect to a gaming PC to play.)
Rez Infinite / Tetris Effect—entrancing, relaxing, colorful games with nice music. Nice for taking a short break between workout sections.
Be careful with Hyperbolica—that game can suck you in! (The PC version at least) Accounting Plus is also really good as a short surrealist story-based game (I think it’s by the same folks who made Rick & Morty, which is a good proxy for if you’ll enjoy its style of humor or not)
Thank you!
I added those gloves to my cart :)