Facebook’s Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 headset has managed to carve out a surprisingly sizable niche as a high-tech piece of exercise equipment as people use software like Beat Saber and Supernatural to get a cardio workout in. There have been some limits to the experience, though, given the standalone nature of the virtual reality headset.
Today, Meta announced that the Oculus Move service is boasting a new integration with Apple Health as well as a mobile view of health stats in the Oculus mobile app. Previously, health data including active time spent, calories burned and goals/progress was only viewable in-headset.
Meta hasn’t exactly earned the benefit of the doubt on privacy matters over the years, so they are specifying that exporting movement data from the headset to your phone or the Apple Health app is strictly opt-in and that this data will not inform ad suggestions.
It’s a fairly low-key (and long overdue) update for the headset, but one which plenty of frequent users will be happy to see landing on their devices at last.
At the company’s most recent Connect keynote, CEO Mark Zuckerberg specifically highlighted the Quest’s popularity as a workout device.
“A lot of you are already using Quest to stay fit, it lets you work out in some completely new ways,” Zuckerberg said in the keynote. “It’s kind of like a Peloton, but instead of your bike you just have your VR headset and with it, you can do anything from boxing lessons to sword-fighting to even dancing.”
Zuckerberg on the Quest 2 as a fitness device — ‘It’s kind of like a Peloton’
