{"id":81444,"date":"2024-02-19T09:22:39","date_gmt":"2024-02-19T17:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/vi-wants-you-to-build-muscle-with-xr-gloves-eventually-its-fitness-first-headset\/"},"modified":"2024-02-19T09:22:39","modified_gmt":"2024-02-19T17:22:39","slug":"vi-wants-you-to-build-muscle-with-xr-gloves-eventually-its-fitness-first-headset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/vi-wants-you-to-build-muscle-with-xr-gloves-eventually-its-fitness-first-headset\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Vi\u2019 Wants You to Build Muscle with XR Gloves & (eventually) Its Fitness-first Headset"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Using an XR headset for at-home workouts basically looks like playing Beat Saber<\/em>:\u00a0y<\/span>ou can duck, dodge, punch or slice to improve cardio and burn fat. With an increasing number of apps that essentially play on that formula, XR startup Vi\u00a0hopes to change things up by letting you build muscle as well with the help of its upcoming XR glove and, eventually, its own standalone XR headset too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Founded by serial VR fitness entrepreneur Cix Liv, the new startup Vi<\/a> (\u2018virtual eye\u2019) announced late last week it\u2019s building a glove you can wear while pumping iron, letting you automatically do things like log reps and keep track of barbell weights.<\/p>\n

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Returning to VR. With a Vengeance.<\/p>\n

Introducing Vi \u201cvirtual eye\u201d. @ViHeadset<\/a> and gloves designed specifically for fitness.<\/p>\n

Joining me are @mentarus<\/a> who built a VR glove company “Plexus”, and @marcusckane<\/a> our “Jony Ive” of VR.<\/p>\n

LET’S GO \u1bc5! Thread on how we gonna do it \ud83d\udd3d pic.twitter.com\/iNFPfT7YPk<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 CIX \u1bc5\/acc (@cixliv) February 16, 2024<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The company isn\u2019t speaking in-depth about the gloves for now, however Vi\u2019s demo video above seems to suggest it\u2019s still in early prototyping stages, with the render promising a sleeker device.<\/p>\n

There is some info to glean from the company\u2019s Discord (invite link<\/a>) though. Product designer Eugene\u00a0Nadyrshin says the ostensibly hardware agnostic controller will use custom hand-tracking models together with IMUs for sensor fusion, and include a Linear Resonant Actuators (LRA) at the back of the hand which give vibro-tactile feedback.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs for openness we want to be as open as possible and you can be assured that we\u2019ll be clear and open about the development journey instead of working behind a closed door for years,\u201d Nadyrshin says, also noting that although the team isn\u2019t making any broad commitment to OpenXR, they\u2019re investigating it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/img><\/a>
Image courtesy Vi, Cix Liv<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You may recognize the startup\u2019s founder Cix Liv from his other three-lettered ventures YUR, REK, and LIV, the latter of which helped popularize many VR games by letting content creators record themselves playing in the third-person. While many of Cix\u2019s past projects focused on XR fitness, the team wasn\u2019t founded with a fitness-focused mission in mind. Instead, Vi is what Liv calls \u201ca pretty big pivot\u201d from a previous idea of creating an AR app that would use computer vision to automatically price objects in your home to sell online<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And that pivot also includes creating an entire mixed reality headset dedicated to fitness: <\/p>\n

\u201cWe will ship the gloves, then headset,\u201d Liv writes on X<\/a> (formerly Twitter). \u201cSell the headset at cost with a subscription for content. You\u2019ll be able to own part of the company with a community fund-raise. We will eventually open up the cameras on the headset too.\u201d<\/p>\n

And why a headset? Liv says that some people need the mental and physical separation from \u2018standard\u2019 XR headsets, such as Quest: <\/p>\n

\n

So why a headset? Here\u2019s why:
<\/br>Hardware is very hard, but it\u2019s also a moat.<\/p>\n

1. Try to hand a middle age person a Quest and say \u201cexercise in this\u201d see how long it takes.<\/p>\n

2. Sweat in your headset and then tell me you\u2019re going to jump into a productivity app. Not happening. pic.twitter.com\/6yfUgtYOgA<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 CIX \u1bc5\/acc (@cixliv) February 16, 2024<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Liv suggests the company can \u201cdo most of this with industrial re-design of existing hardware references. Just being hyper focused on specific use-cases, and do initial runs by 3D printing.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are indeed some recent reference designs the company can co-opt, such as the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ second gen reference<\/a>, which Samsung may be using as a base to build its upcoming XR headset. Still, creating a standalone headset with its own operating system and app store that\u2019s entirely separate from Meta\u2019s or Apple\u2019s is going to be a challenge worth watching.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Vi provided a few renders to give us a look at what could be one of the first fitness-focused XR headsets: <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Using an XR headset for at-home workouts basically looks like playing Beat Saber:\u00a0you can duck, dodge, punch or slice to improve cardio and burn fat. With an increasing number of apps that essentially play on that formula, XR startup Vi\u00a0hopes to change things up by letting you build muscle as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":81445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[6242,57,6243,432,6244,6245,6246,2353,6044],"tags":[6237,52,6238,428,6239,6240,6241,2349,6043],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81444"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techreviewers.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}