AUGUST 2016 MEN’S FITNESS 99Philco Corporation’s
Headsight
The first-ever head-mounted
display, Headsight used
a small video screen and
magnetic tracking to show
remote video images that
correspond to head direction.let’s just say I try like crazy to stay there.” I heard similar ravings from
less competitive users.
“For me, the addiction of Peloton was seeing my progress,” says
Karen Holmes, a physician assistant, who credits the bike for getting
her intoitness. With the ability to measure herself against other
riders, as well as her own metrics, she could see that each workout
provided a baseline for improvement — a major win for any itness
regimen. Both Bernstein and Holmes praised the virtual community
that formed around them. “I’ve made a bunch of friends all over the
country,” says Bernstein.
And all of the Peloton users I spoke to praised the variety of classes,
which also include 1,500-plus on-demand workouts. This huge well
of ever-changing content is a huge factor in motivating yourself to
keep using it, says Richard Ryan, professor of psychology, psychiatry,
and education at the University of Rochester, co-founder of Self-
Determination Theory, and an authority on human motivation.
“Where virtual reality can help is in making the exercise more game-
like and fun,” he says. Simply put, “a boring exercise program will kill
anyone’s motivation.”
Still, as an old-schoolitness guy and weight-room junkie, I remain
sceptical. I’ll admit thatlying on Shadow is pretty cool, but any day
of the week a Sydneysider, for example, can ride a bike across the
Harbour Bridge, hovering 50mof the ground, with a fantastic view
of the city. With motivation like that, who needs the world of Super
Mario? Also, Peloton costs $2,000 for the bike and $39 for a monthly
membership. Are we spinning our wheels to replace our real world
with a virtual one simply because it looks cool?
With those questions in mind, I head to Peloton’s New York oices.
You Can’t See BigDaddy88 — But You Know He’s There
As I tour Peloton’s gleaming facilities with the company’s PR director,
Jaime Kinsley, I feel like I’ve entered some hybrid of an Equinox and
a James Bond villain’s command centre. There’s a small café, a work
area with Wi-Fi, crisp white locker rooms and a full-blown television
studio with a panoply of screens. And then there’s the spin room,
which right now is a darkened chamber of high-tech Peloton bikes all
lined up as if they were robot soldiers readying for battle.
I hop on a home version of the bike and confess I’m immediately
impressed by the design. I often have a hard time adjusting to the
geometry of spin bikes, but the Peloton is modeled after a Pinarello
road-racing bicycle, so once in the saddle I feel right at home.
Eventually I settle on a 30-minute on-demand metric class,
essentially a spin version of HIIT, taught by Steven Little, one of
Peloton’s lead instructors. On my 22-inch waterproof tablet screen I
can see the class, the instructor and the metrics, such as average and
maximum power output, pedal cadence, resistance and heart rate.
On the right-hand side is the most important tool: the leaderboard,
on the bottom corner of the screen. Just as with other boutique
workouts, your primary motivator with Peloton is the ability to
measure yourself against others in the class.
The workout starts, and I gotta say: The virtual experience is
surprisingly close to the live one. The music is thumping, Little
clearly knows how to get your heart rate up, and the bike itself is
comfortable. Unfortunately, the music and coaching don’t distract
me at all from the pain. Nothing does. I feel just about every second of
that class. So I concentrate on the leaderboard. My competitive streak
pushes me to get as high on that thing as possible, and when I see that
just a little more efort could get me ahead of BigDaddy88, I go for it.
Later, I ask Little over the phone whether he has any issues teaching
a class that exists for him almost entirely in cyberspace, and he tells me
that, aside from setup, it’s not much diferent — “Though I’d prefer to
be there when I talk to new clients and be there to set them up.”
All I know is that I beat BigDaddy88 — I just wish he were here in
person so I could see the look on his face.
The Stereoscope
British scientist Sir Charles
Wheatstone uses two photos
and a pair of mirrors to create
the world’s first 3-D viewer.
It fell out of fashion with the
arrival of “talkies”.Sensorama
Part of the “-orama” invasion
of the ’50s and ’60s, Morton
Heilig’s phone booth–like
contraption elevated VR tech
by incorporating smells, wind
and sound.VPL DataGlove
Thomas Zimmerman invents
the first glove that can
manipulate virtual objects on
a computer. With the virtual
hand established, science
has only 99.5% of the human
body to go.Virtuality Arcade Games
British company Virtuality
Group develops VR arcade
machines with headsets
and controls. Though
relatively immersive, crude
graphics dampen the
experience. It fails.Nintendo Virtual Boy
A clunky red plastic eyepiece,
3-D graphics–induced
headaches, and the fact that
it isn’t technically VR sinks
Nintendo’s foray into virtual
gaming before it’s barely out
of the gate.The VR Explosion
From high-end rigs like Oculus
and HTC Vive to Google’s $16
mobile Cardboard, the next
generation of VR is here. But
is it doomed to become a fad
as well?A Short History
of Virtual Reality
1938196219871990199520161961