VR Health Exercise Tracker
In metabolic testing at the VR Institute of Health and Exercise and SFSU’s Kinesiology labs, the most intense games like Thrill of the Fight, Knockout League, Beat Saber, and others are capable of burning more calories/minute than most dedicated workout equipment at the gym.
But they’re way more fun and far less painful.
This app is built on hundreds of hours of VR-specific metabolic testing using research-grade equipment, making it the only official calorie tracker designed to be accurate for the muscle activation of VR.
Features:
- Accurately track your heart rate and calories in VR (heart rate monitor required)
- Personalize your calorie predictions per game
- Discover and compare new healthy VR games
- Free to use, transparent methodology
- The official app of the VR Health Ratings org.
Accurately Track Heart Rate and Calories in VR:
The VR Exercise Tracker uses hundreds of hours of metabolic VR data to calculate your calorie cost in each game we rate. General exercise trackers struggle to predict accurate calorie burn from heart rate because there’s no public data on the muscle activation of typical VR titles. We have that data.
See Personalized Calorie Predictions:
Even before you start playing a game, the VR Exercise Tracker uses each game’s VR Health rating to calculate expected calorie burn for you, based on your age, weight, and gender.
Discover New Healthy VR Games:
There are new games coming out all the time that are good exercise, making VR a refreshable piece of exercise equipment. Finding those games is now much easier. Easily see an ordered list of all games rated by the VRHI, from highest expected calorie burn to the lowest.
Free and Transparent:
The VR Health Institute is an objective, third-party ratings organization dedicated to promoting healthy VR. This app is a service of the institution, and will always be free to use. The VRHI is also dedicated to clear and transparent science, and we publish our methodology at our website at https://vrhealth.institute.
Compatible With Standard Bluetooth Heart Rate Monitors:
The VR Exercise Tracker is designed to be compatible with standard Bluetooth heart rate monitors. Here are a few models that we have tested and recommend:
- Polar H10 (tested and verified)
- Polar H7 (tested and verified)
The Official App of the VR Health Institute (Our Backstory):
In 2016, the VR Health Institute created the VR Health Rating system, an independent system for rating VR content using research-grade metabolic equipment. For three years, the VR Health Institute has been collaborating with the Kinesiology department at San Francisco State University to collect metabolic data on VR experiences using COSMED and PARVO metabolic carts.
These are the academic standard for metabolic research, and typically range from $75,000 to $150,000 each. Much of this data has already been published in peer reviewed scientific journals, or is pending publication.
How Can You Help?:
This project is both an emerging area of research and a passion project for our team. Various graduate students, researchers, companies, and industry experts have contributed. But it is still new, and we all need to work to make it better. Here are a few ways you can help the project, if you are interested:
- Please provide bug and feedback via the app feedback tool.
- Join our discord channel at https://discord.gg/wF3PYnB
- Encourage developers to submit games for rating by the VRHI
- Stick with us. We’re new to app creation. It’s a learning experience.
Category : Health & Fitness
Reviews (30)
The idea is cool. Tracking VR fitness based on research done, and keeping track of exercise by game. Right now, it doesn't support connecting to smartwatches - you need an actual heart rate monitor. But even with, it doesn't always accurately track and at times loses the connection. I'd also love to see an option to export my exercise to other apps (Google Fit is a big one), or even to a simple spreadsheet.
A great idea, but without the right gear it can only give you a calories-lost count (which makes sense) - however, this counter appears to not calculate on my app, as after a workout it said no calories were burnt. Further, the app glitches if you try and adjust the time - it shorted my workout by 15 minutes, which can't be changed. Again, good concept, but there are some glaring issues.
The concept of the app is appealing. It has all the games I currently own. I will have to test and see how it compares to my Charge 3 est kcal burn for workouts. As for linking my device to the app, it is not supported at this time. Other than that, the app looks good, you can adjust the workout lengths and have an alarm go off when you are done. It also shows an est of how many kcals you will burn depending on the time you set. Also, it looks like the kcal burn is adjusted by your stats.
Really neat app for someone getting into vr fitness. Gave me some great ideas for games to get for fitness line-up. Unfortunately, I only gave it 3 stars because once I connected my mi band, which I bought because it was compatible with the app, it just crashes a few seconds after I open the app. I cant even get it to stay open long enough to unpair my mi band so I could use it separately. Hope this gets fixed, because otherwise its great.
Very useful app I use my own heart rate monitor because it is not compatible with this app however I use the app as a general timer during workout sessions and initially I was not happy with the single sounding alarm but the recent update has made the alarm more audible. All sessions are recorded and the length of sessions also and then I can calculate the calories of total sessions within the period . I will like to buy a usable monitor very soon but I spent money on the recent top games.
REALLY not thrilled with the fact that I had to create an account and THEN find out that my tracker (FitBit Charge 3 which includes the ability to detect heart rate) isn't compatible with your app. There should have been a means to make the app detect my tracker and identify if it's compatible before requiring me to sign up. And no, a list of "a few models we have tested" on the website doesn't count when the phrasing implies that you haven't listed ALL of the compatible options.
Used it for a week no problems, then the app wouldn't connect to my heart rate monitor, turned it on and off, changed the battery and uninstalled and reinstalled. Then it says my user name and password are wrong and won't let me change them, so I made a new account, bam instantly work for about a week then same thing happened
Hi guys, great idea but keeps crashing to homescreen after lauch. I registered all good, it detected my galaxy fit, on my note 8. It then just started crashing on startup. The watch vibrates once when the app launches, but then the app crashes, possibly a compatibility issue? Hope that helps would love this to work.
I have a perfectly good smartwatch with hart rate monitor(Samsung galaxy watch active) but it's not supported? what is the point in making an android app if the only smart watch you can use is an apple watch 🙄. I will give it 2 stars because at least i could see how long i been playing and the equivalent exercise to put in a different app that tracks more accurately. If the supported devices is updated to include Android smartwatches I will increase stars for sure as the idea is a sound one
As great of an idea this app is, it lacks in many areas. I can't actually use the since it refuses to detect my Samsung active2. For Samsung's current best watch, which realesed over a year ago, to not hace support is shocking. I get that these watches are expensive, but there's alwaya beta testers. Hell i'd gladly bug test the watch
Connected without issue to my Samsung Galaxy Fit 2, and apparently tracks for a lot of the VR apps I use regularly. I'm impressed so far, but it would be great to have a companion app showing me my smartwatch information inside VR as well.
Keeps disconnecting after 20-30 minutes. BT is still connected to heart monitor, but session is over. It'll be a great app once the bugs are worked out.
This app claims it calculates your burn based on the game. Really, it's based on your heart rate. You can do that without the app, easily. Also, Estimating 14 calories/minute is way overestimating a vr workout. I feel successful maintaining 11-12 calories/minute going on 60 minute bike ride. Do yourself a favor and just download the app that goes with your HRM if you have one. If not, cut in half their calorie burn estimations at best. This will give highly inaccurate data.
Dosen't support Galaxy watches, doesn't have Supernatural in workout choices. I think this should be in the app info before downloading the app and having to set up an account.
"Your Fitbit Ionic is not comparable yet". You had me at "YET" :) the fact that I can input my stats manually definitely helps and doesn't make this a useless app, so thank you for that! When can we expect Fitbit to join the list of compatible devices??? Also my BF has a Samsung smart watch (it also tracks fitness) will he also eventually be able to link to his smart watch?
App is good and works with my Polar H10 heartrate monitor. But it's missing the VR fitness game I play the most called Synth Riders. Other than that, they cover most popular VR fitness games. I'm not ready to ditch my Polar Beat fitness tracking app for this yet.
Crashes upon detection of my heart rate monitor. (Coospo H8) Update not fixed crash. Once the monitor is detected it gives a reading then closes the screen.
Fitbit is not supported. Great idea though... looking forward to your progress!
UPDATE: Now claims it connects to my Fitbit Charge 2, but then as soon as I try to start a workout it says no device connected again. Tried a Garmin Vivosmart and a bluetooth HR band from Lifetime Fitness too - still not working. It would appear that they do not support most fitness trackers/HR monitors. This means that to use it I would have to buy another heart rate tracker. Many people invested in VR for exercise already own a HR tracker. Not willing to buy another for this app to function.
Couldn't tell you how the app is. It won't let me past the sign up screen and no "floating red button" that the app says you use to report
It constantly finds a new way to piss me off.
Works great with my Oculus and Polar heart rate strap. 4 stars because it's not integrated with Google fit. Come on guys.
Not many heart rate monitors are supported including the moat popular fit bits which astounds me, to bad it sounded like an awesome app i am not aure why fitbit is excluded from being sported
I like the idea, but samsung devices are not supported so I will not replace my galaxy watch just because of the app.
Doesn't connect to Garmin devices yet, so that's a shame. Otherwise it's a neat concept!
Great idea, but it crashes on startup every time after signing up.
Really wanna use this app but my trackers are not supported. Please add support for the Fitbit charge 3.
This app would be amazing if i could conncect my samsung active 2 watch to this app..please can you add support for it other wise id'd give it 5 stars. this is the future right here.
Doesn't seem to work with Wear OS devices (at least not the Ticwatch pro 3)
Kind of half baked, missing a key feature While I like the idea of more accurate calorie counting in VR games, their login system can be a bit buggy (As in, it's impossible to reset your password at the moment). What this app really needs is a way to access it while in VR! Surely it can't be that hard to make a native Oculus Quest app that you can use before starting a workout. It's clunky to have to take off the headset and use your phone, then go back into VR. Or else use voice commands. additional I bodged a solution together, using the Vysor phone desktop streaming app and Virtual Desktop. I now stream my phone to my PC, then use Virtual Desktop from within the Oculus to access the app. It works, but surely there must be a better way to do this.