The leading virtual reality fitness innovators at Icaros have juse released a new experience on their flying VR machine and it’s a great evolution of their fitness training approach. Gravity is the third game experience from Icaros. The new game takes you from space to earth in what could be the most thrilling, and potentially most scary for some, breathtaking vertical free fall.
What can you expect from the new experience? According to Icaros, you swerve space debris, meteors, space ships and reach high altitude atmosphere areas, dodge jets and helicopters just to land on a moving target. The best part, you use your whole body to get to that landing. Icaros promises that this workout is probably their best and with this new game theme, we tend to agree.
The game also promises to never get repetitive or boring with their shuffle approach. The gameplay shows you an infinite pattern and randomly changes your path though this labyrinth. The goal that Icaros was striving to reach in these workout was that each user would train their motion skills, work their body and sharpen their senses with each three minute experience or in the infinite time mode with increasingly difficult hexagon labyrinth they dub shuffle.
Johannes Scholl, CEO of Icaros had a lot to say about the new experience–mostly on the innovation of the steering, hinting a very new feeling for users. According to him, “Gravity comes with a new way to control the steering. It is very intuitive and requires a lot of focus, good balance and reaction skills. We especially love the new shuffle mode: it randomly creates new courses that are infinite and constantly become more challenging – a great way to improve these skills. Of course all Gravity modes exercise core and upper body muscles. A complete run in the Survive mode takes about three minutes and can become very strenuous.”
As Scholl stated, Gravity does indeed combine a vertical direction of movement with very intuitive controls. By leaning in all directions while falling with constant speed, you trigger all direction changes. A completely new and exciting way to control an ICAROS experience.
The Icaros team also told us that the new game has very tangible health and medical ramifications, especially those recovering from spinal surgery or simple back pain: “Since vertical is the major motion, the pilot’s head is in a relaxed and very neck-relieving posture. This leads to a very relaxed back muscle tone. Physiotherapists, who addressed us in the past, asked for this kind of positioning since they assumed to have an additional and motivating way of treating people recovering from spine surgery.”
As you’d expect, this new experience has three difficulty levels: easy-medium-hard and the non survive mode lasts anywhere between one to three minutes for each gamified experience. The aforementioned shuffle mode promises a new challenge for each run where a new course is created with every single start.
How does this rank against other Icaros experiences? This one is clearly a cut above the previous generations with a new take and more emphasis on make your body be the guide through every movement. If you get a chance to try it, you should!
