I Tried VR Fitness as a Person With One Eye

I may be down an eye, but I can still see how quickly the fitness industry is evolving. Instead of struggling through your own at-home exercises, you can now track your data using wearables, ask ChatGPT to inform your workouts, or try AI-informed fitness machines for more personalized strength training. Among the more futuristic of these developments is the Meta Quest 3S ($299): a virtual reality (VR) headset specifically designed for fitness and wellness. But is the future of fitness truly accessible for everyone?

Having lost my right eye in May of 2024, the world looks a little differently now (literally): 3-D glasses have been rendered completely useless, my peripheral vision is limited, and my depth perception is laughable at best. A headset with the ability to transform your living room into a workout class certainly sounds intriguing, but I wasn’t sure if it would actually work well for me. Still, I was willing to give it a try . . . and truthfully, my curiosity was at an all-time high.

“I feel like people think of [VR] as this out-of-reach, techy thing,” says Leanne Pedante, head of fitness at Supernatural (Meta Quest’s VR fitness and wellness app). “But the reality is that so many of the people — our members — who use it, fall in love with it because it actually offers a lot more accessibility.” Whether you want to do a workout seated, only use one arm, or avoid certain movements (like squats), you can easily make these modifications using the Supernatural app, she says (more on that later). With this in mind, I decided to try the Meta Quest 3S as a person with one eye — here’s how it went.

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Leanne Pedante is a coach and head of fitness at Meta Quest’s VR fitness and wellness app, Supernatural.

My Meta Quest Experience

Pedante and I were both a curious to see how the Meta Quest 3S would work with partial blindness. “I don’t think it should actually get that much in the way, because — at least in the Supernatural experience — each of the lenses include a stereoscopic vision video, so you should be getting the full experience from one lens,” she says before I try the headset on.

We decide to give the headset an initial try, and adjust the accessibility modifiers if needed. “We have a variety of accessibility modifiers in the app, so if you find that peripheral vision things are not feeling good, we can also limit the peripheral vision,” Pedante says. To my surprise, I was able to see the screen quite clearly without any major issues. This being my first-ever experience with a VR headset, it took me several moments to get over this excitement.

Supernatural — Meta Quest’s official app for VR fitness and wellness — comes with two workout modalities. The first is called “flow,” which involves moving to music and striking moving targets in the air, and the second is boxing. We started out with a slow flow class so I could get accustomed to the headset.

For my first experience with VR fitness, the Meta Quest 3S seemed fairly comprehensive. I was able to hit the moving targets by raising or lowering my controllers — easy enough, right? That said, I did feel slightly disoriented after a few minutes in the complete 360 view. I could tell that some of the targets whizzed by my blind eye without me knowing, which is where limiting the peripheral vision would come in handy.

Later on, I also tried moving through a free five-minute yoga class (you can try similar classes using apps like Alo Moves XR, but you may have to pay a subscription or enroll in a free one-week trial). Although it took a moment for me to get used to the virtual instructor, I was impressed by how immersive the experience was. Had I lit some incense, I would’ve felt like I was in a legitimate yoga studio. Again, I did feel a little dizzy and disoriented by the end of the flow, but this may just be because I’m so new to VR. It helped to know that if anything ever felt too overwhelming, I could always double tap the right side of my headset to exit the immersive experience and restore some of my real-life surroundings.

The Bottom Line

While I won’t be abandoning my physical yoga studio anytime soon, I was pleasantly surprised to find that VR fitness was still an option for me. I didn’t have to worry about blurry graphics or headache-inducing visuals. I was able to enjoy an immersive workout — even if I’m still working out the kinks. That’s not to say my one-eyed VR workouts won’t take some getting used to. But all told, I’m glad I gave the headset a chance (and I’m blown away by all the immersive experiences I’ve been missing out on).

Meta Quest 3S Accessibility Modifiers

Accessibility modifiers are found in the settings menu of the VR. Here are some adjustments Pedante recommends to ensure your workout is as accessible as possible:

Chandler Plante (she/her) is an assistant health and fitness editor for PS. She has over four years of professional journalism experience, previously working as an editorial assistant for People magazine and contributing to Ladygunn, Millie, and Bustle Digital Group.