General News

Since the pandemic, more people have been turning to VR for workouts. With limited access to gyms because of lockdowns, many are able to find exercise through VR apps. Whether it is burning calories, engaging in high-intensity cardio or building muscle, getting fit can be achieved with a VR headset.

While gyms may be open again, interest in VR fitness remains strong as Google Trends show. So what are some of the reasons for the demand?

But can VR really make you fit? Fitness apps are certainly designed to do just that. They typically have you performing a combination of moves that you do not usually do in real-life workouts. VR games that are not fitness-focused can also be physically demanding enough to leave you feeling sore in places you never knew existed. In Beat Saber, a game that involves slashing cubes and dodging walls, the sessions level up in difficulty, requiring faster and more body movements. Much like actual sports and exercise, apps like Supernatural and Beat Saber can improve hand-eye coordination and reaction time.

For your VR workouts, you can use a Quest 2 movement tracker to keep track of the calories you burn, the amount of time you are physically active in VR and personal goals reached.

The Virtual Reality Institute of Health and Exercise measures the metabolic impact of VR games and compares them to exercises like running and biking. In Beat Saber’s case, it has a similar calorie burn rate as playing tennis.

The high metabolic rate from these games is partly attributed to people expending more energy without realizing it. This is because the immersive experience VR provides is oftentimes more motivating than working out in a gym. Key to maintaining engagement is gamification which rewards players to encourage them to do more.

Not everyone is in favor of working out in the virtual realm, at least not yet. The cost and weight of VR headsets are barriers to the wide adoption of VR for fitness. Sweating into the gear is also something many are uncomfortable with though managing the hygiene aspect of it is easy with solutions like the VR Cover Fitness Facial Interface and Foam Set for Meta Quest 2.

Despite these challenges, this form of medium is steadily gaining popularity and acceptance that working out in VR can get you fit. From personal trainers to athletes, VR apps are being used more and more to supplement or replace traditional training methods. As the technology continues to evolve, VR certainly has the potential to further revolutionize how we work out and become an integral part of a healthy, active lifestyle.

If you are looking to make your Meta Quest 2 more comfortable, read on! We have included some useful advice here on relieving the pressure from the front-heavy headset, getting the best fit for your glasses and accessory recommendations that will enhance comfort and improve your VR experience.

When Meta launched Quest 2 in 2020, one of the improvements highlighted about the new headset was the weight. Quest 2 is 10% lighter than the original Quest.

Sony’s upcoming PlayStation VR2 headset is also lighter than the previous generation. LIkewise, Apple could potentially release an AR/VR headset that is slimmer in design than the current crop of devices on the market.

Making headsets smaller and lighter is a goal among VR manufacturers. Reducing the weight will enable people to wear the headset longer and spend more time in VR.

It is a common gripe that the headsets today feel heavy, leave pressure marks on the face after a session and even cause neck pain.

Another complaint is the foam gaskets can quickly become hotbeds of germs as sweat and dirt get trapped in the porous material. Wearing a dirty headset spoils the immersion because you would be less focused on the game and more worried about catching something nasty.

Wearing glasses with the headset can also be uncomfortable for some people, especially if the prescription frames are thicker than the recommended guidelines from manufacturers.

Let us now look at some ways to address each issue and how we can improve the level of comfort.

If you are using the original strap on Quest 2, you would want the strap to go on last. We suggest wearing the headset this way:

1. Place the headset on your face and fit your glasses inside, making sure they are not touching the lens.
2. Bring the strap over your head.
3. If your glasses are pressing uncomfortably against you at this point, try pushing forward the arms of the frames just above your ears. This will shift them slightly away from your eyes.
4. Adjust the strap on the sides so that they are not pressing your ears against the frames.

Thicker prescription glasses can benefit from using a glasses spacer, whether it is the spacer that comes with the headset or the VR Cover versions – XL Spacer (FAQs here) and VR Cover Facial Interface Spacer (FAQs here). A glasses spacer creates a bit more gap between your glasses and the lens and reduces the possibility of them brushing up against each other and causing scratches.

You can also consider switching to custom made prescription lens inserts. With them, you never have to worry about how your glasses are fitting in the headset or potential scratches to the lens. VR Lens Lab sells prescription lens inserts specially designed for different headsets.

Always wipe down the headset before and after every VR session. Use a microfiber cloth or anti-bacterial wipes. We recommend alcohol-free and skin-friendly wipes as these will not harm the surface of the headset or leave a sticky residue.

For a more sanitary option, try utilizing a washable VR Cover, Silicone Cover or a wipeable, adjustable foam replacement such as the Facial Interface and Foam Replacement or the Fitness Facial Interface and Foam Replacement. These cleanable accessories not only reduce the build-up of sweat and dirt, they also extend the shelf life of your equipment by keeping it in good condition for longer.

Disposable covers are convenient to have in a multi-user setting where you need a quick change of covers before passing the headset on to another person.

By following some of these tips, you will be able to get the most out of your headset, improve the comfort and experience the best possible VR.

In this article, we share some tips on how to clean your VR headset safely and effectively. We hope that this information will help you enjoy VR without having to worry about wearing a grubby headset!

VR headsets are becoming increasingly popular as the technology continues to develop and make these devices more comfortable and accessible.

However, one often overlooked aspect of VR is hygiene maintenance. Sweat and other bodily detritus, which easily build up on these devices, attract pathogens. Maintaining good hygiene reduces their growth and spread between sessions and multiple users. Regular cleaning also removes dirt which, if left to accumulate, can damage the hardware.

If the cleaning sounds like a lot of work, it’s not! Keeping your equipment in good, clean condition simply requires following a few best practices like these listed below.

Besides following the recommendations on how to clean your VR headset, you can also get some VR accessories to enhance hygiene.

For Quest 2, using a protective cover such as the VR Cover or Silicone Cover over the original foam gasket makes the job of wiping up so much easier as they will keep most dirt off your device. An extra bonus is these covers can be handwashed and be fresh and clean for your next VR session.

Another option is to replace the original foam gasket with wipeable foam pads. We offer the following kits in different designs for Quest 2:

• Fitness Facial Interface and Foam Set for Meta Quest 2
• Facial Interface & Foam Replacement Set for Meta Quest 2

Stow away the headset and controllers when you are not using them. A carrying case like this protects the equipment from dust and other elements.

You can shop for solutions for other headsets here.

As you can see, it is not difficult to keep your devices in great shape. Just a bit of regular care and some hygiene accessories will help put your worries aside and let you fully enjoy your VR adventures.

​​Released today on Amazon US: new Fitness Facial Interface and Foam Replacement bundled sets, designed for Meta Quest 2. We are offering up 3 versions of the Fitness set:

Choose this set if you wear glasses. The XL Spacer puts your glasses 6.5mm away from the lens, so that there is less chance of contact between the two. As it helps avoid potential scratches, you can feel more confident about using your glasses inside the headset.

If your Quest 2 is literally leaving you red-faced after a session, consider getting this set. It comes with the Comfort Foam which is a much thicker foam pad than the original foam and our other foams. Soft to the touch, it eases some of that pressure from the headset, reducing the red marks around the eyes and making your VR experience more comfortable.

With both the XL Spacer and the Comfort Foam, this bundle ticks all the boxes. Get this set for the ultimate upgrade.

These accessories are also included in every set: Vented Fitness Facial Interface, Silicone Nose Guard, Minimal Foam, Standard Foam and a Lens Cover. All the foams are designed in wipeable PU leather for easy hygiene.

Buy now from Amazon US.

With Dark Blue Facial Interface:

* Fitness Facial Interface and Foam with XL Spacer Set for Meta Quest 2

* Fitness Facial Interface and Foam Comfort Set for Meta Quest 2

* Fitness Facial Interface and Foam Comfort Set with XL Spacer for Meta Quest 2

With Dark Grey Facial Interface:

* Fitness Facial Interface and Foam with XL Spacer Set for Meta Quest 2

* Fitness Facial Interface and Foam Comfort Set for Meta Quest 2

* Fitness Facial Interface and Foam Comfort Set with XL Spacer for Meta Quest 2

Follow the links below to start shopping!

* Amazon DE

* Amazon ES

* Amazon FR

* Amazon IT

* Amazon UK

While the idea of the metaverse has been around for decades, it has been attracting fresh attention lately, thanks to Meta, formerly known as Facebook, and its pivot from social media to developing an “embodied internet” that CEO Mark Zuckerberg regards as “the next evolution of social connection”. What exactly is the metaverse? How can we access it and what can we do in it? Diving into the topic of the metaverse throws up some answers and plenty of questions.

Definitions of what the metaverse actually is are varied and vague. It is sometimes confused with the word “cyberspace” but broadly speaking, the metaverse will involve how its technology will dramatically change the way we digitally interact with others. Zuckerberg described the metaverse in his 2021 Connect keynote presentation as “the successor to the mobile internet” and nearly everything we do in real life can be done in the metaverse using wearable tech like Quest 2 and augmented reality (AR) glasses or phones and computers. Like the real world, the metaverse is a place where you can work, socialize, learn, play games and enjoy various forms of entertainment.

It will also enable individuals to do things that are not technologically feasible yet such as teleporting in and out of virtual reality (VR) worlds and easily syncing and sharing resources in digital 3D among remote teams that are working on collaborative projects.

The metaverse was first coined in the dystopian sci-fi novel, Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson. He imagined it as a virtual universe of shared connections populated by digital avatars of people who access this alternate world by plugging into terminals and donning goggles. The characters in another popular sci-fi book, Ready Player One, go through full sensory experiences in VR with the help of haptic suits.

Rather than the job of one company, building the technology, protocols and infrastructure to bring the metaverse to life is the work of many. Tech giants like Microsoft and Meta have a number of metaverse-tech in the pipeline, as do other assorted companies, including Nvidia, Unity, Roblox and Snap.

Based on the metaverse products and services being developed, there appears to be some general consensus on what this futuristic world might look like and what it should entail.

The metaverse is a single, shared social space where avatars of individuals can connect. You see the digital world through the eyes of your avatar and others will see you in your avatar form. To enhance the realism of avatars, Meta is working on a high-end, mixed-reality headset, codenamed Project Cambria, that will, among other capabilities, display your actual facial expressions on your avatar’s face.

A combination of VR, AR and other tech tools will be used to integrate 2D and 3D worlds into a virtual community. Access can be via VR headsets, AR glasses, PCs, game consoles and even phones.

Holograms play an important role because they lend a sense of presence with other 3D avatars. VRChat and Meta’s Horizon Worlds and Horizon Workplaces offer examples of how this technology might work.

The metaverse will operate under a digital economy, allowing people to create, buy, exchange and sell goods. From an economic standpoint, virtual goods will be perceived to be as real as goods in the real world. Just like physical goods, virtual goods do not disappear between sessions.

Blockchain technology can be used to pay for items. Non-fungible tokens, for instance, are a decentralized way to track and establish ownership of virtual goods. As cryptocurrency is independent of any central authority or corporate server, it allows virtual goods to be moved freely inside the metaverse even if the movement is between different parts of the metaverse owned by different companies. This means you can take virtual items like cars from one platform to another.

The freedom of movement across the metaverse space indicates an open architecture with broadly agreed-upon standards for different entities. It is a shared universe of IPs. Different interoperable servers will connect to the same shared metaverse. Often cited examples of globally shared systems are the world wide web and the email.

Stephenson took this idea further in his book – in his fictional metaverse, while the myriad of software has been engineered by different corporations, the developers need to work with an overarching organization to obtain approvals and permits.

Ideally, the metaverse has the ability to host millions of people in a single instance of a server. Some existing apps and games seem to possess these metaverse-like features and capabilities. Second Life, an online multimedia platform, is a virtual world that mimics the space constraints and land scarcity of the real world. There, individuals represented by avatars can create their own spaces to host games or events. Fortnite meets some of the criteria too – it has millions of players with customizable avatars who gather to socialize, play and purchase objects that have the quality of persistence like real objects. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) like World of Warcraft, Minecraft and Roblox are essentially entire virtual worlds. Even so, these gaming worlds fall short of a true metaverse as players are segregated so that only a small subset of them can interact at any one time.

Some limitations may stand in the way of a global metaverse. VR headsets, despite the strides made in improving comfort, are still heavy to wear for extended periods. Many people experience motion sickness in VR. AR glasses are not aesthetically pleasing and the physical capabilities of compact glasses are also questionable. People may still prefer in-person meetings and events to virtual ones. There are also concerns over how much control any corporation should have and how that squares with ownership of user-generated work.

Which aspects of these features will come to fruition and which will stay a pipe-dream remains to be seen. In the meantime, given the eagerness of many companies to jump on the bandwagon and invest huge resources in developing the next iteration of the internet, the metaverse hype is not going away any time soon.

Facebook’s name change to Meta was undoubtedly the biggest news to come out of Facebook Connect 2021. The rebrand reflects the company’s shift to focusing on social connections through the metaverse, a virtual reality world where people interact via digital avatars. With the help of developers and content creators, its goal is to bring this immersive platform to life, using and integrating key technologies so that they are interoperable and accessible to all.

Sharing the vision in a letter, CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote, “Our hope is that within the next decade, the metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce, and support jobs for millions of creators and developers.” In the metaverse, users will be able to do most things in real life, like meeting up with family and friends, learning new skills, collaborating with co-workers, playing games and attending events.

There will be more opportunities for creators and artists, for individuals who prefer to work remotely and for educators and students to go beyond traditional learning practices.

All these virtual activities can be experienced from the comfort of one’s home. By removing the need to commute, people can achieve more with their time. In Zuckerberg’s words, “this isn’t about spending more time on screens; it’s about making the time we already spend better.”

The company’s roadmap for creating the metaverse includes a product team formed specially to develop the next computing platform, as well as channeling resources to the building of AR and VR technologies. Announced in its 2021 third-quarter earnings report, Meta plans to spend about $10 billion USD on Facebook Reality Labs, the division tasked with creating its augmented and virtual reality hardware, software and content.

Developing “the next evolution” of social technology is well underway. Beta versions of Horizon Workrooms and Horizon Worlds, VR applications for work and play, were released over the last year.

Horizon Worlds, now open to anyone with a Quest 2 headset, has evolved from a platform for building games to more of a social hub offering interesting things that people can do. Horizon Workrooms, on the other hand, brings remote workers together in a virtual space for team-based activities.

A high-end, mixed-reality headset dubbed Project Cambria that Meta is working on will have capabilities that allow your virtual avatar to maintain eye contact and reflect your facial expressions in real time. Angela Chang, head of VR devices at Meta, promised that Cambria will offer “high-resolution, colored mixed reality passthrough” to bring the real world into the headset with a sense of “depth and perspective”.

Another product, codenamed Project Nazare, is consumer AR glasses. Described as the company’s “first full augmented glasses”, they will include “hologram displays, projectors, batteries, radios, custom silicon chips, cameras, speakers, sensors to map the world around you, and more.”

Polar, an upcoming iOS app powered by its augmented reality platform Spark AR Studio, allows users to build and share their own AR effects and filters directly on their mobile phones. Other new Spark AR features include body tracking capabilities via People AR, a world tracker for AR experiences that are geo-anchored to locations and improvements that will make it easier for users to build objects virtually to place in the real world.

Meta has acknowledged that crypto and NFTs need to be integrated in the metaverse community. On NFTs for example, people will feel more confident about owning these digital assets. Facebook Head of Metaverse Products Vishal Shah said , “This will make it easier for people to sell Limited Edition digital objects like NFTs, display them in their digital spaces and even resell them to the next person securely.”

These technologies aim to give people the ability to immerse themselves fully in the metaverse and express themselves naturally. According to Zuckerberg, “the defining quality of the metaverse will be a feeling of presence – like you are right there with another person or in another place.” Attaining true presence is “the ultimate dream of social technology” and this guides the company’s innovation of future apps and products .

Some experiences will be completely new. In the metaverse virtual space, users can teleport as a hologram to be at the office, concert venue or each other’s homes. Many physical things, such as TVs and computers, will be holograms designed by creators. Interacting with these virtual objects will be done through innovative products like augmented reality glasses or other types of screens. Traversing the metaverse will be supported by different devices and technical infrastructure.

At the Connect conference, Zuckerberg said, “From now on, we’re going to be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first.” Their businesses, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Oculus, will be run by Meta and to bring the metaverse to people, technologies built for the platform will be integrated into its social media apps and VR ecosystem.

To make the metaverse even more accessible, the company plans to sell its devices “at cost or subsidized” prices.

Zuckerberg said that the word “meta” is derived from the Greek word meaning “beyond” which aptly expresses the company’s ambitions to go beyond social media and move into the next chapter that involves building an “embodied internet”.

While Meta’s core mission is still about bringing people together, its products and services, designed around people’s needs, will pave the way for interactions in a fully-realized computer-generated world. The metaverse will offer endless possibilities and exciting opportunities. As Zuckerberg concluded in his Connect keynote speech, “the future is going to be beyond anything we can imagine.”.

Working out with the Meta/Oculus Quest 2 is a fun way to stay fit and what better accessories to help you achieve your fitness goals than our new Fitness Facial Interface and Foam Set (Dark Blue & Black). First released in a dark grey and black option, the latest version offers a dark blue Fitness facial interface with a detachable silicone nose guard, along with a pair of black foam replacements, Minimal and Standard, and a protective lens cover.

To make the most of your time in VR, the Fitness Interface is designed with multiple passive air vents to promote air flow and keep the lens from fogging up and disrupting your sessions. It comes in a hybrid material that flexes, allowing it to wrap around your face so that it feels more comfortable. There is also a removable silicone pad on it to block out light leaking through around the nose area.

Included in the set are 2 PU leather foam replacements which can be wiped clean of sweat at the end of your workouts. They install straight onto the interface and can be adjusted until you find the right fit. Use the thinner Minimal foam if you fancy being closer to the lens; otherwise, the Standard foam is the other option if you need more padding for those cheekbones.

You also get a soft lens cover to place on the headset lens and protect it from damage or dust when your device is sitting idle.

With all these add-ons, the Fitness set complements the Meta/Oculus Quest 2 perfectly to make VR easy and enjoyable.

Buy now at our regional stores.

• US Store (ships to the US, Canada and Mexico)
• Europe Store
• Worldwide Store (for other destinations)

Also available on Amazon

• Amazon DE 
• Amazon ES
• Amazon FR
• Amazon IT
• Amazon UK
• Amazon US