Is This Fitness In The Metaverse?

The idea of an immersive virtual world might come off as more scary than exciting. It evokes a future not unlike that of the movie “Wall-E” — in which humans transform into sedentary creatures, satisfied more by their virtual entertainments than the physical world around them. But for some users of the metaverse, merging the physical with the virtual is more or less the entire point. In growing numbers, athletes from the physical world are taking to platforms such as Zwift and VRChat to exercise with each other inside virtual spaces, bringing the human co-experience of the metaverse into the fitness world. In the second episode of Is This The Metaverse?, hosts Alexander Lee and Sara Patterson speak to the creators of virtual fitness platform Zwift — who say that their product is certainly part of the metaverse — and sit in on a VR gym class populated by fantasy-inspired dragons and life-sized otters.