VirZOOM

ABC's Chronicle returns to VirZOOM for a new segment of Next Gen, Life Fitness hosts VirZOOM at NIRSA

founder @ VirZOOM

Published on Feb 18, 2019

Two exciting updates. First, back in May 2016 ABC affiliate WCVB produced a Chronicle Next Gen segment on VirZOOM, one month before we shipped our first generation consumer product, VZ Bike. The Chronicle team returned last week to treat their viewers to an update,  one month before we ship our second generation consumer product, VZfit Sensor Kit.

They were astonished by the progress that VirZOOM and the VR industry has made since their last visit.

Watch it here.

Second, over the weekend VirZOOM commercial partner Life Fitness hosted VirZOOM at NIRSA in the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, where 2,500 campus recreation professionals came to see the latest in health and wellness solutions for colleges. No surprise that the world's largest commercial fitness maker ($1B Sales 2017) had the largest booth there. Overseeing the visitor-packed booth was Life Fitness national Collegiate and Athletics Segment Manager Jeremy Wilson, and 18 members of his sales team.

Here's the collegiate and athletics play for VirZOOM and Life Fitness...

College recreation center managers are under intense pressure to build eSports facilities in rec centers. Their performance is measured in turnstile turns, the number of students that visit the center regularly. eSports are wildly popular with students, but eSports games, played seated with hand-held controllers, are not conducive to students' physical and mental health, and can cause injuries. Parents disapprove. Rec center managers are caught in the middle between these conflicting demands.

VR eSports games played standing with VR hand controllers are more physically engaging than those played seated with a hand controller, involving players in more body movement than eSports video games without VR.


But VR eSports games are not specifically designed to promote physical fitness. The games are largely shooters, and participation by women is quite limited.

VR games that engage players in physically challenging athletic competitive game play that involves running require expensive specialized equipment like the $3800 commercial version of the Omni Virtuix VR treadmill to allow for safe - albeit awkward - movement without the exposing the player to the risk of falling or running into objects while wearing a VR headset. Special shoes are required. VR systems are additional, costing $2,000 or more.

VirZOOM vSports (VR eSports) are competitive video games played in VR that are specifically designed for competitive physical exertion, and appeal to both men and women. If you're not pedaling fast, you're losing. This independent research on college students measured and quantified the effectiveness of VirZOOM. 

Played among college teams as an athletic sport, VirZOOM vSports requires both competitive VR gaming skill and physical endurance. The range of multiplayer competitive VR game play options is not limited to games that involve walking or running, a logical limitation of VR treadmill mechanics. Competitive game design using a stationary bike as controller is virtually unlimited, from cycle and car races to tank and helicopter battles.

VZfit Commercial turns any stationary bike that is already in a rec center into a vSports game controller in five minutes. Playing vSports is as easy as, well, riding a bike. No expensive specialized VR game controller equipment needed. VZfit Commercial, including turnkey VR with no VR sytem set-up or installation required, is only $2,995 plus a $995/year digital services fee, including auto-updates and remote maintenance.

VirZOOM held the world's first athletic, multiplayer, real time vSports competition at Canyon Ranch in The Venetian at CES in 2017. Back then our first generation VR Bike product required customers to have their own VR systems, and required complex set-up. Today VZfit Commercial lets colleges create vSports arenas using the bikes they have, by adding VZfit Commercial to each bike in minutes.

VZfit Commercial based vSports checks all the boxes and solves a major problem for
college rec centers. It gives students competitive video gaming that
promotes physical and mental health, and at a price that's affordable to
college rec centers.

Everyone wins: students, parents, and recreation center administrators.

Duke, Western Illinois, and other colleges in attendance at NIRSA plan to pilot VZfit Commercial to launch VirZOOM vSports at their school, to grow the base of vSports leaders that today include MIT, Bloom University, and University of Alaska.

The VirZOOM team greatly appreciates your support for our project. Help us get the word out and make VZfit Commercial available to students in every college rec center worldwide, and get our new consumer product VZfit Sensor Kit into every home. Please tell your friends about our WeFunder campaign by posting: "The Future of Fitness: VirZOOM on WeFunder" on your Facebook page or Twitter account today.