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Supernatural — Workout near, go far
Exhilarating full-body exercise in virtual reality, pairs w/smartphone and HR monitor. Expertly coached daily workouts, detailed fitness tracking, well known popular music, exercise in the world’s most beautiful destinations without ever leaving your home.
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@suzywillow @rrhoover I’ve been doing this workout almost daily since late January and can recommend without reservations. It’s a necessary part of my morning routine. Serious workout, but fun as hell!
I mean - nail meet hammer.
I'm not a gamer so I've had no reason to purchase VR devices, even though I find it interesting from a tech POV. I'm also a big believer that AR will provide more utility to me.
But this is clearly a use case I can get in to for VR.
I am curious though: how do you receive feedback from the trainers?
BTW - I mean 'nail meet hammer' as in you nailed it, not in the 'everything looks like a nail to a hammer' kinda way. ;)
@lonnylot currently there is dynamic difficulty that adjusts to your ability in real-time to try to keep you in a flow state where you feel like you are mastering something just beyond what you should be able to do. The movement maps are calibrated to your personal range of motion. If you can only lunge so far to the right and all the way to the left, the system will adjust the workout to suit you. It also figures out your personal range of power and rewards you for hitting targets with force that makes sense for you. The coaches warm you up at the beginning standing in front of you, they then guide you through the workout by way of audio-only (you wouldn't want them as a visual as it'd be way too distracting). They remind you how to do some of the moves correctly, push you to try harder, and encourage you throughout. At the end they come back visually and do some sort of stretching or cool down. We are currently working on implementing the next system of dynamic interactive audio coaching, which will look for when you are doing something incorrectly and help adjust you back onto the right path.
@londonrom the two biggest hacks I've found to solve this are a silicone cover that goes over your Quest face pad, and a strong fan blowing on you. The first one is so important we bought a bunch of them and are sending them to anyone that signs up for the 30-day free trial. You'd be crazy to workout in VR without one. This is my favorite fan:
https://amazon.com/Lasko-Pro-Per...
Really brings the immersion to another level as well when you see you're standing on top of a mountain and you feel that blowing on you.
@chrismilk Chris, as you said, these are hacks and I'm afraid your company is just too early to market. I'd rely on voice only for now, with most of the efforts into the AI coach.
Don't get me wrong I think the app is probably great (I can't try it i'm in UK) and I really admire the tech + design + choreography + psychologists etc gamified workouts app project. I'm an app dev myself, so I have a good feeling on how big this project must be.
But it looks like the hardware is just not up to speed yet if you need to buy not one but 2 physical products that cost $20 + $80 to be able to use your app.
@chrismilk @londonrom some tips here for anyone suffering from fog. Strangely I've never experienced this issue despite spending a lot of time in VR workouts and games: https://www.androidcentral.com/h...
I’ve been a user for a couple of months and absolutely love this product. To be frank, it’s the one clear use for VR in my life. Each workout is fun, but also exhausting and invigorating. I love the intensity, the graphics, the journeys on which I’m taken.
I’ve also seen that the team at Supernatural led by Aaron and Chris tend to be highly responsive to user input and launch frequent updates.
Highly recommend
@stepan_velichko we are looking at expanding to other platforms. Right now we very much utilize the fact that Quest does not have a cord. Our workouts rotate you in 360 on a regular basis, as rotations are helpful for the purpose of exercising your core.
Mindblowing video, still waiting for a decent virtual workout app, and this one looks awesome. Super !!👏
Hey ?makers - thank you for pushing the boundaries and creating another great at-home fitness alternative.
+1 for sweat/headbands - I ended up getting a silicone cover for my own quest which is vital for VR workouts.
Pros: really engaging. Loved the 360 workout but def need a good sized play area. Music is also really good and was pretty much dancing during the workouts. Visuals are great although I noticed I didn't have a lot of time to enjoy them since each exercise starts and ends pretty abruptly. I was sweating bullets after just one workout and that made me feel good. Goes by pretty fast. I've noticed the best workout experiences are when you don't have to think. I like the guidance supernatural provides for a seamless workout.
Feedback:
1) When I visit my profile on the iOS app (or even in game) having seen my scores for each workout I would expect an overall leveling system. This ensures incremental progress and that each action I take is one step closer to a fitness goal. Users want to know that everything they do has a purpose and that it aligns with their needs/wants.
2) Really like that you've integrated HRM - I would take that a step further and integrate other data to encourage miscellaneous behaviors like daily move/stand/exercise scores (from Apple watch). This promotes overall health and can contribute to your overall "Supernatural score". Many fitness apps only care about users who are within their own ecosystem but if you can tap into their movement data and enable passive benefits for just having general healthy habits - then you're really proving to your user that you care about their wellbeing and goals, rather than only rewarding them when they use your app.
3) I was never good at beat saber so coming in was challenging for some songs - I would've expected a stage leveling system in which I'd have to reach a certain score on a beginner level before being able to play harder levels. I struggled a lot during a beginner workout because one of the songs was really hard and kept missing all of the balloons (it got overwhelming). I'd consider myself in pretty good shape so I can imagine this would be frustrating for many new users. The balloon color distinction isn't very strong either given the translucent tail of each balloon is the same regardless of white or black and I can barely see my own bats. Many times I would swing and have no idea where my bat was and why it didn't seem to hit a balloon.
4) I agree with Jesse from above that it would be great to see the rating of each balloon hit (accuracy + power) so I know how I can improve.
5) Loading times were long. Loading a new workout seemed to take a while as well as loading the next song / stage. I lost connection during my training session and when I came back in decided to skip the training since it didn't auto prompt if I wanted to finish it.
@chrismilk Supernatural is not available in your country yet - disappointing, why? Do I really need to use a VPN to sign up? (I'm in Germany).
@thomaslutz_de we have deals with most of the major record labels and publishers to use their catalogs. Making those deals global involves a negotiation with a new set of rights holders for each individual country. There's a reason Spotify was not everywhere on day one. Long story short, it's very complicated but we're working on it.
Hi PH community!
Myself, co-founder Aaron Koblin, and the team at Within have been quietly building Supernatural for almost two years now.
We started from a place of trying to solve a problem we had, and that many others we knew had as well. Exercise requires long-term commitment to see the benefits, but offers very little short-term enjoyment. The primary exercise modality we experienced with home digital connected fitness was copying the movements of an instructor on a screen. That's amazing if you can get into it and stick with it. We could not.
We wanted to try to build Supernatural as a different kind of home exercise solution. We imagined something that could take all the things you love most about VR, music, sports, and immersive gaming, and combine that with what you appreciate about something like Peloton (new daily classes and trainers that motivate you to push harder), while magically eliminating the less fun parts (things like pedaling in place or stationary running).
Virtual reality uniquely allows for a modality of home exercise that's fundamentally fun and something you actually look forward to doing every morning. It's similar to playing a sport you love, like snowboarding or tennis, but that sport is from the future, and it fits in your bedroom.
We started with the beloved mechanics of VR rhythm games, we refined the movements with experts in kinesiology and biomechanics, worked with professional choreographers to create the movement maps you play to the music, and recruited top trainers to create and guide you through the full workouts. We consulted behavioral psychologists to help with ongoing exercise engagement, as the best exercise is always the one you keep doing. All the destinations you work out in are 3D volumetric photogrammetry models of the most beautiful destinations on earth. We forged deals with the biggest names in the music industry to bring the best music to your workouts on a daily basis. There is a companion app for iOS and Android, with Apple Watch, Android Gear, and other Bluetooth heart-rate sensor integration.
Thanks so much for checking us out. We're offering a limited 30-day free trial, so if you've got an Oculus Quest, join us and experience it for yourself. We'd love to hear what you think.
-Chris Milk (co-founder)
@chrismilk when is the app going live? Signed up, but the quest app doesn't seem to have been released yet, still says "coming soon" on the quest page and doesn't come up in the store via search.
this is the future! love this idea. You should upgrade it and add more gamification mechanics to engage and retain a user
I love VR workouts so I signed up, downloaded the app, put in my credit card, and was excited to try it out. Unfortunately, the app doesn't actually seem to be available in the Quest store yet.
@jesse_ezell thanks so much! It goes live in the Quest store this morning at 10am PT. Please let me know what you think!
@chrismilk Can't wait to try it out! Been doing BoxVR regularly during the lockdown. Will be nice to have some variety!
Ok, app is live and I got in. Amazingly well done. It has a lot of the things I've been waiting on VR workout apps to do like actual video captured instructors inside the app and it's really impressive how beautiful they've managed to make it inside the Quest. It looks better than a lot of the Rift games. Definitely going to be spending hours in here.
A lot of complaints in the reviews about month pricing, since not many apps in the Quest store have subscriptions currently, I already pay for mirror.co and I do pay for a gym membership (currently frozen due to lockdowns), and I think most people would understand paying for gym classes... however, even though I put in my card because this has amazing potential, I'm not sure what I'm getting for that $20/mo. The headband thing is cool, but am I getting daily content updates, live instructor led training, or "updates" for that $20 a month? Maybe updating the app and site to clarify what that's paying for would cut out some of the negative reviews.
@jesse_ezell Thanks for the kind words. You'll be getting a new coach lead workout every day with new destinations, new popular music, and new choreography to each of the songs on an ongoing basis. I hear you about subscriptions. For some reason my calendar app is now a subscription service. I can tell you from the inside of this product that the cost of production for daily workouts, and the ongoing monthly costs for music licensing of the top artists, there's no other feasible way to do it than a subscription. If it was a static app it would be a different story. But there's a reasonable rationale Spotify, Netflix and Peloton are subscriptions. We are paying for the ongoing service and access to their new content.
@chrismilk Few hours in and I'm liking it. A few things I think would make it even better:
1) More video: Would be amazing if the coach was there the whole time instead of 30 seconds at the beginning and end.
2) More variety: The current workouts are great, but there is so much potential here to mix it up a bit, maybe have some boxing workouts, or even just standard old school instructor led workouts that don't even use the controllers. Mirror.co is great, but having someone stand over you while you are doing pushups like a real coach would be so much better. There's only so much strength you can build with repetitive motions against the air vs adding more resistance. Long term, too much rapid movement increases the likelyhood of RSI developing, at which point impacted people would just have to stop if there are no alternative workouts.
3) See my progress in workout: Not knowing how many minutes to go makes it harder to push through if you are getting tired. Not knowing your current accuracy and power levels makes it hard to know if you are doing better or worse than average. Having those indicators ever present in beat saber is really nice.
Anyway, awesome start and looking forward to see how it evolves with the subscription revenue coming in to fund enhancements.
that là khó để đảnh giá một sàn phẩm công nghê tôi uuư vì nó gần như là không có nhược điểm và khiêm khuyết.
siêu nhiễn nó tập hợp tắt cả những điều mà chúng ta luôn mong muốn và cần thiệt. No mang lại chỉ chúng ta cảm giặc vui sướng và thích thú mới khi sử dựng. Sieu nhièn một sản pham của 2020
Supernatural is the best. I didn't think it was possible to actually enjoy working out, but this is SO MUCH FUN. Trainers are great, the destinations are insane, and the playlists are on point. Can't stop using it. Congrats @chrismilk and team 👏
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