Bringing Action and Adventure to Mixed Reality

To create physical VR games that play like real world sports, the VR industry needed a new form of locomotion. That’s what VirZOOM does. Our patented and trademarked technology solves one of the biggest problems in VR, which is how to move through virtual worlds continuously and freely without inducing motion sickness. Our technology lets us create physical VR games that are fun to play and at the same time deliver exercise benefits, much as sports like skiing and cycling do in the real world. 

Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab (source), put it this way after trying VZfit games last year:

"I was blown away by the VirZOOM experience… it is critical to leverage the natural leaning movements that our perceptual systems have grown used to in the real world. By integrating head movements with pedaling [a stationary bike], VirZOOM’s control scheme was shockingly easy and engaging. 

They have discovered how to solve one of VR’s hardest problems – moving freely through large virtual spaces without getting dizzy or uncomfortable. I normally avoid any experience in VR that is not based on physically walking, but leaning into turns while pedaling through virtual space is among the best experiences I have ever had in VR in 25 years."

*This testimonial may not be representative of the experience of other customers and is not a guarantee of future performance or success.

 

*VZfit, our 3rd generation VR Exercise Games

The effectiveness of VirZOOM’s VR Exercise Games has been clinically proven in tests conducted by Exeter University London and Brunel University and published in the peer reviewed British Journal of Health Psychology: Ready Exerciser One: Effects of music and virtual reality on cycle ergometer exercise

Researchers concluded: “The VR and VR-with-music conditions elicited the most positive affective valence, highest levels of perceived activation, greatest number of dissociative thoughts, and most exercise enjoyment… The present findings illustrate the efficacy of modern VR technology in the exercise context.” 

We Make Every Hour of In-Home Fitness Feel Like Twenty Minutes of Fun

Affordability. Convenience. Motivation.

A recent study conducted by the Center for Disease Control found that only 53.3% of adults are meeting objectives for aerobic physical activity and only 23.2% are meeting the guidelines for both aerobics and strength-training (source). 

Taking a closer look at the numbers:

• Americans spend about $1.3 billion on unused gym memberships annually.
• The average gym membership costs $58 per month, or $796 per year with fees.
• 82% of gym members go to the gym less than 1 time per week and 
• 22% completely stop going altogether 6 months into their membership (source) 
• The average gym member “underutilizes” two-thirds of their gym dues by $39 per month, or $468 per year. (source)

Enter: VZfit. A VR-based solution that is affordable, convenient, motivating, and scientifically proven. For just $349 to purchase a Meta Quest 2 headset + $99.99 for our first year subscription, VZfit customers typically log 40 minutes of exercise 3 days per week. That’s 120 minutes a week, nearly twice the CDC’s recommendation of 75 minutes. What’s more, many of our users tell us playing VR Exercise Games doesn’t feel like working out at all. Some call it: “The workout without the work.” As a recent reviewer at Men’s Fitness states: “[With VZfit] 20 minutes have flown by and I haven’t even noticed.”

And we are not done!

VZfit is our third generation product. Like generations one and two it focused first on users with both VR headsets and fitness equipment, like a stationary bike. Our bike based games are still terrific – there are many variations, many things you can pedal besides bikes to keep it interesting – but there is a much larger market of consumers who would benefit from games like ours and who have only a VR headset, but don’t have a bike. This is why we went back to the drawing board and created new, patent-pending motion tech that builds on our previous patented motion controls for pedaling in VR.

 

*The above is a collection of VR motion test games for a future product. Product is still currently under development and is not yet available on the market.

Motion Labs is a new app we developed for App Lab, a secondary Meta Quest content store for Quest users.  Motion Labs is a testbed of several mini-games designed to expose App Lab visitors to different uses of our new motion controls, such as for racing or battling, to collect feedback. That feedback is helping us tune the new tech for the 4th generation game that we are jointly developing under a confidential grant. You can try it for yourself if you have a Meta Quest 2 headset: visit this link

Riding To The Top in Revenue, Ratings, and Reviews

Our current shipping product VZFit is available through the Meta Quest store where it has been installed by 800,000 users and is among the top 10% of the platform’s earners, generating over $1 million in lifetime revenue (source). Our platform has nearly 6,000 subscribers and averaged $50K MRR in 2022, a 762% increase over 2019. We have also achieved a 4.0 out of 5 stars rating from our app customers.

"The global metaverse market size in 2022 was valued at US$47.48 billion with a growth rate of 39.44% CAGR to a valuation of US$678.80 billion by 2030." - Strategic Market Research, June 2022 (source)

“A lot of people have been using VR for fitness. It’s probably the most fun way to get in some quick cardio.” - Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, October 2020 (source)

In October 2021 Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg identified VR Fitness as a strategic segment of the company’s future plans (source).  

That month, Meta announced the acquisition of VR Fitness developer Within, maker of popular VR Fitness app SuperNatural, for $400M (source). Since 2019, Meta has acquired 11 VR technology and game studios including CTRL-labs, Beat Games, Sanzaru Games, Scape Technologies, Ready at Dawn, Lemnis Technologies, Downpour Interactive, BigBox VR, Within, Twisted Pixel Games, and Armature Studio (source).

Apple has reportedly been developing a product with both Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) capabilities for seven years. An Apple VR/AR headset is now expected to make its debut at WWDC 2023 in June (source). The MR platform will reportedly ship with gaming, fitness and collaboration apps (source). Apple has since 2020 acquired an unknown number of VR and AR related companies, including Spaces, Camerai, NextVR, and Akonia Holographics, among others (source) (source). 

HTC launched their new Elite XR Mixed Reality (VR and AR) headset in January 2023 and identified VR Fitness among four applications for the new headset (source). 

Recent milestones in 2022 include:

• VZfit 2.0 launch
• New VR motion controls patent filing 
• Development and launch of Motion Labs app on Meta Quest Apps Lab to test our next generation VR Exercise Game prototypes (source)
• Active Monthly Users: 16,765* 
• Session Duration and Frequency: 40 minutes/session, 3 days per week* = 120 minutes/week versus 75 minutes/week CDC recommendation
• Total virtual kilometers traveled by VZfit users: 4,009,934* (equivalent to 5 round trips to the moon)
• Total calories burned by VZfit users: 118,378,815**

* Source: VZfit telemetry Feb. 5, 2023 since May 2019

** Sources: VZfit telemetry average 29 calories/vKM. Statistical average 32 calories per kilometer (https://burned-calories.com/cycling)

VirZOOM’s VR Fitness segment traction:

Join A World Class Team Bringing Natural Movement and Sports-like Experiences into the virtual worlds

Over the past seven years, VirZOOM has been able to establish itself as an innovator in the virtual reality and gaming space, with a patented system that levels up the VR fitness experience. With more products and partnerships in our pipeline, we believe our proprietary motion control technology will be capable of carving out an entirely new category of exercise games. We aim to expand on the VR Exercise Game category we created to include every VR headset user and inspire even more users to get fit while playing VR games and get fit in the metaverse.