Here there be dragons...

"I'm telling you stories. Trust me." - Winterson

Virtual Reality getting Real Results?

So I tried boxing in VR (Knockout League)...  And...  Interesting experience...

I loved the name creator -- you pick an adjective or title (Mr, Mrs, The, Wicked, Incredible, etc) and a noun (Princess, Beast, Weapon, Pancake, etc -- yes, pancake was an option.  Yes, I considered it.). Some of the combinations appealed to my sense of humour.   Then a brief tutorial and you're off.

So it's boxing -- like in a ring face to face with someone else trying to hit you.   It turns out that I'm not okay with even virtual people trying to hit me.  Lol.  I was so uncomfortable with it that I had to fight the instinct to physically step back to get more distance from him.

Then, to make matters worse, I'm also not okay with hitting somebody.  Okay - not quite true, once was okay.  But then when he's not quite there, to keep hitting him was not okay.  Especially once his mouth started bleeding.  Ugh.  But the whole "knockout" thing means you keep going.

But -- on the plus side, the game is clearly balanced to skill.  I imagine if I were any good, the characters would fight a lot harder and faster.   Mine took his sweet time telepathing with long windups which hand he was going to use and on what angle, so by the end I knew exactly where to go to dodge and then come up swinging.

Other plus -- it's by FAR the best VR workout I've found yet.  My cardio went way up (maybe partially due to fear of giant people hitting me but hey - result is the same ;). And my quads were sore after from all the dodging, so I'm deeming that a win.

I also discovered that not only can't I block (I either go too early and it doesn't work or too late and it also doesn't work) but in the midst of things, it doesn't occur to me to block.  Hit or dodge are the only two options my brain registers.

Not sure I'm going to keep this one.  Liked the workout but didn't actually enjoy the experience.   Will try it once more and see.   But was definitely interesting to try.