FunFitLand is expanding beyond the headset with a new smartphone companion app for iOS and Android, bringing live heart rate data from compatible wearables directly into its VR workouts on Meta Quest and Apple Vision Pro.
I’ve been testing the new app and heart rate integration in beta using my Apple Watch. During workouts, my live heart rate appears inside the headset alongside a circular indicator showing how much of the current song remains and another indicator showing which song I’m on in the workout.
I enjoyed having that additional information available while exercising. Together, the heart rate reading and progress indicators gave me a better sense of both my effort and where I was in the workout without having to interrupt it.
Afterward, the mobile app provides a more detailed record, including average and maximum heart rate, a graph of the session and time spent across five heart rate zones.
The app also lets users browse FunFitLand’s workout library, save favorites, review previous sessions, track goals and streaks, set workout reminders and, on Quest, exchange kudos with friends. Social features aren’t included in the Vision Pro version at launch, though FunFitLand says that’s temporary.
Bringing Heart Rate Into The Workout
At launch, FunFitLand will directly support standard Bluetooth Low Energy heart rate straps, Apple Watch and supported Samsung watches. Other watches and fitness bands may also work, with the mobile app providing a compatibility test. Headset support includes Meta Quest and Apple Vision Pro.
Getting that heart rate reading from a wearable into VR requires several steps.
FunFitLand founder Meng Zhang explained that a compatible watch or heart rate strap sends its reading to the FunFitLand mobile app. The phone passes that data to FunFitLand’s servers, which send it to the headset.
“The number you see while you train came off your wrist a moment earlier,” Zhang told me.
Zhang says the harder problem was dealing with all the ways that chain can break. Phone permissions, operating system power management, individual wearable requirements and even a watch shifting enough to lose contact with someone’s wrist can interrupt the reading.
“Making this feel seamless means getting Meta Quest, Apple, Google and watch/strap manufacturers to cooperate in an order none of them designed for,” Zhang said.
I encountered one of those complications during beta testing when FunFitLand incorrectly warned me that my heart rate monitor wasn’t connected even though it was. Zhang says my report helped the team address a problem with how the app communicated connection failures.
The in-headset display is also still being refined. I found that the information initially appeared too close to my field of view, requiring a moment of refocusing to read it comfortably. I shared that feedback during the beta, though Zhang says other testers have asked for different behavior, including keeping the information stationary rather than having it follow their head.
“The lazy version of listening to users is a settings page with a hundred options, which just moves the design problem onto the person using the thing,” Zhang told me.
Zhang says the team plans to gather more feedback before settling on the one or two options users actually need.
At launch, FunFitLand doesn’t use heart rate to affect scoring, workout pace or calorie estimates. During a workout, the benefit is simply being able to see how your body is responding without checking a watch.
Zhang describes his approach as “measure, then monitor, then motivate.”
“Everything else on screen is the app’s measure of you: combo, accuracy, targets hit,” Zhang said. “Your heart rate is your body’s measure of YOU, and it doesn’t care how well you’re playing.”
Afterward, that data becomes part of the workout record, allowing users to compare how their bodies responded across different sessions.
A Different Approach To Mobile VR Fitness
FunFitLand’s expansion comes as VR fitness companies are expanding onto smartphones.
FitXR recently launched mobile workouts that can be completed directly on a smartphone, allowing subscribers to exercise without putting on a VR headset. FitXR does not currently include heart rate tracking or health monitoring.
FunFitLand is taking a different approach. Its workouts remain in the headset, while the phone handles workout browsing, history, goals and social features. It also carries heart rate data from a wearable into VR.
Page views inside the new FunFitLand mobile app. Photos: FunFitLand
The FunFitLand mobile app bears some similarities to Supernatural’s companion app, which similarly extends a headset-based fitness service onto a smartphone with workout discovery, history, goals, social features and heart rate tracking. FunFitLand differs by keeping the live reading visible during the active VR workout itself rather than requiring the user to pause to see it.
On Apple Vision Pro, Zhang believes FunFitLand is the first native app to show live heart rate from a wearable inside the headset during a workout and attach the resulting heart rate record to that workout. He qualifies that claim, noting that Vision Pro can also run compatible iPhone and iPad apps and that he hasn’t checked every one.
Zhang makes no similar claim that displaying heart rate inside VR is new to Quest, which already supports Bluetooth heart rate monitors. FunFitLand instead integrates the reading directly into its workout interface and connects it with the detailed post-workout record.
Beyond The Headset
The mobile app also gives users access to FunFitLand between workouts.
“Before this, FunFitLand was somewhere you visited,” Zhang told me. “You put a headset on, you were with us for half an hour, and then you were gone until the next time.”
“Now there’s a thread that stays open in between.”
Zhang describes what the team has built as a foundation rather than a finished feature set. The app currently lets users browse workouts, save favorites, review sessions and heart rate data, follow goals and streaks, receive reminders and use some social features.
“The headset is where the effort happens. The wearable is where the truth is, because your body knows how hard that was better than your score does. The phone is where the routine lives: deciding, reviewing, remembering, being reminded.”
FunFitLand isn’t yet using heart rate to dynamically adjust workouts or make recommendations. Zhang says the team is talking with people working in rehabilitation and exercise physiology, but he doesn’t want to promise features without a timeline.
In a follow-up after answering my questions, Zhang told me the immediate goal is to “help people understand their own body first.” He also emphasized the realities of developing FunFitLand with a small team, saying he’d rather spend its resources on “real problems” than “whatever is hot right now.”
“We’re not looking for the next feature,” Zhang said. “We’re looking for the next thing that makes it easier to keep going.”
FunFitLand is available on Meta Quest and Apple Vision Pro. The new mobile companion app is available at the iOS App Store and Google Play store.
