Meta is giving another big boost to VR fitness. Starting in April, the company will make it possible to view your Oculus Move VR fitness stats in more places rather than just within a VR app on Quest and Quest 2 Headphones. You’ll be able to choose to view metrics (calories burned, minutes spent exercising, and your VR fitness goals) within the Oculus mobile app for iOS and Android.
There’s a bit more big news for iOS users who want all their fitness data to fit into one container, so to speak: The Oculus Move will support integration with Apple Health, so your VR workouts can be tracked on the go. Same app as your standard, non-virtual reality workouts. Meta says it is exploring integrations with additional fitness tracking platforms.
Syncing your VR metrics to the Oculus or Apple Health app requires subscription, and Meta says it doesn’t use Move metrics to inform ads you see on the company’s other services. If you sync your data with the Oculus mobile app, your Move data will be stored on Meta’s servers and protected with end-to-end encryption. Meta will update its supplemental data policy on April 11 with information about how it stores your fitness-related information if you choose to participate, and You can see those terms here..
Exercising in virtual reality has grown in popularity since the release of Quest 2 in late 2020. The pandemic played a role in this trend; people wanted to engage and stay fit from the comfort of their homes. But it’s also because some of the fitness experiences are really fun, from what I’ve heard, and it’s presumably a very profitable business for Meta. In October 2021, the company bought withinthe team responsible for Supernaturalpossibly the most popular subscription-based fitness app available for the Oculus Quest standalone VR headset.
In the event that Apple ever launches your long-rumored AR/VR headset with Apple Health integration of a similar kind, at least iOS users will have more than one option for a headset that can contribute to their fitness goals.