VR Exergaming: The Solution to Better Health

The increasing focus on health and fitness has driven the global VR fitness game market worth about $11.1 billion in 2022, with projections to surpass $16 billion by the end of this decade.

As digitization advances, technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) are emerging. These aim to seamlessly integrate the digital world into our daily lives, allowing us to cross boundaries and enter realms previously unthinkable.

VR, in particular, is a computer-generated simulated experience perceived through wearable technology and sensory components. Realistic images and sounds are generated through headsets and projections, creating a virtual environment where people can move around and interact with the virtual items.

The most popular applications of this technology are currently found in video games, virtual meetings, medical training, patient rehabilitation, and military training. Another interesting and highly beneficial use case of VR has emerged in the fitness industry, where an estimated 1 to 2 million people are working out in VR.

This is of great significance as regular physical activity is essential for maintaining a healthy weight, improving mental health, protecting against chronic conditions, and increasing the overall quality of life. However, motivation and adherence to exercise continue to be the problem with all kinds of physical exercises.

Companies and scientists expect to change with VR exergaming—a combination of physical exercise with gaming—which holds great promise for incentivizing physical activity. According to Dr. Dominic Potts, the lead author of a new study that aims to leverage sensor technology to keep exercisers motivated:

“With exergaming, we can address this issue and maximize a person's enjoyment and performance by adapting the challenge level to match a user's abilities and mood.”

VR Exergaming: The Solution to Better Health

The increasing focus on health and fitness has driven the global VR fitness game market worth about $11.1 billion in 2022, with projections to surpass $16 billion by the end of this decade. With the help of VR technology, people can exercise and maintain their health right from the comfort of their homes.

Exergaming, or active video gaming, is an emerging trend in which digital games require bodily movement to play, stimulating an active gaming experience. This is why many have also designated it “the future of fitness.”

Compared to conventional exercise, exergames can enhance both performance and enjoyment by distracting users from discomfort as they reach closer to or surpass the ventilatory threshold, immersing them in engaging virtual environments.

For best results, exergames must offer challenges that correspond with the user's ability, helping them realize the benefits of immersion, performance, and enjoyment. Matching the exergame difficulty to that of the user allows them to achieve a flow state, which is the psychologically optimal state in which a user is focused and engaged.

One way to achieve this is to adjust the exergame difficulty in real-time based on the user's heart rate. But there's another, better way to control the adaptations of exergame and that is to estimate the emotional state of the user during the gameplay. Through affect recognition, which is based on physiological sensor measures, exergames can be adapted for not just difficulty but also in other ways like interactive storytelling. It may even help us better understand the player experience.

However, affect recognition in exergaming is challenging because of the influence of physical exercise and interpersonal differences on emotions and physiological measures. This calls for the need for emotion-inducing environments, for which researchers have offered solutions. However, they are focused on flow or just how pleasurable it feels (valence). Of course, this is just part of the emotional spectrum and isn't validated either across different levels of exercise intensity.

Furthermore, physical exertion affects several physiological measures such as movement and perspiration. While affect recognition has been investigated in non-VR exergames, though only at moderate exercise intensities, there hasn't been a systematic and rigorous comparison of a person's affective state in VR exergames across various exertion levels besides valence.

Moreover, there is a need to account for the interpersonal differences, exercise influence, and environmental factors like stimuli when assessing data related to physiological sensors for the same. Removing them from sensor data can increase the generalisability, robustness, and predictive power of affect recognition models, as per the study.

So, the research team from the University of Bath took upon the task of creating exergames that can actually offer a better and more personalized approach for improved results.

Taking a Personalized Approach to VR Exergaming

Supported by the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation program and Innovate UK, the latest research has developed exergames that people can adhere to. These games use sensors to continuously measure a person's emotional state during exercise, adjusting the game in real-time to keep users engaged.

According to Dr. Potts, completely adaptive exercise games sense a person's emotions and give them obstacles when they're ready for a challenge and ‘rewards' when they're struggling.

The Bath team was successful in developing such personalized exergames by using a new range of sensors that can be put into VR headsets and wearables like smartwatches. These sensors then track the physical changes of the exerciser as