Getting Started with Virtual Reality as Assistive Technology

sensors that communicate to the VR games how fast the user is peddling the bike. From the users experience in the VR game they are sitting in race car, riding a horse, or kayaking, and the faster they peddle the faster they go in the VR game. The par- ticipants in the VR experience greatly increased their duration and intensity of physical activity while playing the exergaming system. A picture of the system is shown in Figure 2 below. There are also many VR exergaming apps that don’t require an exercise bike or additional equipment. Holoball is a VR rack- etball like game played in standing room VR using the control- lers to serve, redirect, and whack as hard as you can a ball on court. It makes a great single player or competitive exergame to get the participants moving and exercising. The most popu- lar VR exergame is probably Beatsaber in which participants use the controllers to hit the beat with lightsaber drumsticks while listening to a range of popular songs. Playing one song seems easy but after 20 minutes most people are starting to feel the Beatsaber burn.

Facebook’s Oculus (Oculus Rift, Oculus Go), Samsung (Gear VR), and Sony (Playstation VR). Some of these require a dedicated computer in addition to the VR head mounted display (Oculus Rift, HTC VIVE) while others are stand alone VR headsets (Oculus Go). Each system has its own collection of VR games, experienc- es, and applications. All of these systems provide free apps to play and control 360 video. VR exercise gaming One of our first projects in the WSU ATR&D Lab was to ex- plore the use of VR exercise gaming (exergaming) to increase the physical activity of individuals with intellectual and devel- opmental disabilities (IDD) (McMahon, Barrio, McMahon, Tutt, & Firestone, 2019). We chose to examine physical activity because we felt that exergaming in VR could help address concerns about reduced physical activity for students as they transition from their K-12 schools. The study examined the exercise dura- tion and intensity for a group of students with IDD when using a VR exercising system called Virzoom (Virzoom.com). The Vir- zoom exercise games are controlled using an exercise bike with

Figure 2: VR Exergaming session in the WSU ATR&D Lab.

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