The Supernatural Diaries — Week Three

Noah, Session Nineteen

Okay, I’ll admit this — I did not write up my notes immediately. In fact it is Saturday when I’m writing this. I hit up the workout of the day “Full Body Werk” and I’ve got to say: they are really dialing in the medium level. Medium is not any easy thing to design for, and I’m starting to get impressed, even if — like Kathryn — I find some of the mapping to be a bit “HOW THE HELL IS ANYONE SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT?”

As we get closer to the 31st, I’m going to find it hard not to just commit to the year. Especially with what they unleashed on Friday.

DAY TWENTY ONE — MAY 15, 2020

Kathryn, Session Twelve

Today’s workout “Freedom Rock” contains a bunch of familiar classic rock songs and is rated medium-level intensity, which feels just about right to me. I’m glad that Supernatural has continued to add both workouts with older songs from Universal’s catalog as well as those at the just right/Goldilocks intensity.

The beatmaps are starting to become more predictable to me even on the first run through and I am feeling myself get into a flow state during most of the workout. However, I also keep consistently finding myself too far forward and too much to the left at the end of each song. With enough 360-degree turns, I’ll inevitably get off-center no matter how hard I try not to. And there’s still not really a good point to pause in each song to look down at my feet. So I’m not sure how to best counteract my drifting even during these slower songs. And this means I’m constantly tripping the boundaries of my Quest guardian when I reach my arms out all the day, which is distracting.

But: familiarity with each song in today’s workout also seems to be helping and, in a nice surprise, I’ve got a smile on my face during “All Right Now” by Free (which happens to be my alma mater’s unofficial fight song).

Noah, Session Twenty

If I had any resolve when it came to not committing to a full year the last vestiges of it were wiped out by “Freedom Rock.” For the love of God it has two Fleetwood Mac tracks. I’m sitting here the next day and I can still feel what the workout did to my obliques — in a good way. Also I am aware that I have obliques, which is something I’ve mostly only understood intellectually over the course of my life.

Of late I find myself messing around with other movement/music VR apps. I’ve got review code for Audio Trip at the moment, and am thinking about picking up Pistol Whip because people speak so highly of it. The different games/apps have different goals from Supernatural, but as the offerings in here mature I find myself liking the mapping here — especially on the Medium courses — more and more. It really starts to feel like they mapmakers are getting that they are programming our bodies and not just trying to challenge us to do something that is difficult for difficult’s sake.

Indeed the biggest thing I’m getting out of this challenge is an understanding of how far the VR world as a whole — and physical immersive as well — has to go when it comes to dialing in the physical/spatial aspects of this discipline. We talk a lot about narrative and about user interface but there’s so little understanding of what happens when the UI is someone’s body. At least, so little understanding in the tech dominated conversations that surface readily.

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