Has anyone use WINreality?

[whiporee]

My son got an Occulus 2 for Christmas, and I was wondering if anyone had experience with using virtual reality batting training. Their facebook ads look good, and they seem to be used by a lot of colleges. It's not too pricey ($24/month) and maybe it could help.

Anyone have experience with it or any other VR stuff?

 

[Tatonka]

My Brother-In-Law brought his Oculus over to our house for the XMas holiday and my DD's had a blast playing with it. It's come a long way since the early VR devices. I've been getting more and more intrigued with the WIN Reality stuff (I'm a sucker for good marketing and probably even more so when it a softball gadget or tool). Looks very interesting and helpful, particularly during these Covid times or during the winter months when it's hard to see many (if any) live pitches. I'd love to hear more "real world" testimonies or experiences from someone who has used it (and isn't getting paid to endorse).

 

[HunterMO]

I’m interested as well. More out of curiosity. I did see a Facebook post of an umpire going over how he was using it to help train.

He’d get into traditional position, let the pitch happen, and then point to where he felt it had come across with whatever pointer the program uses. Then he’d click an option that shows where it really was. Telling him how accurate/inaccurate he was.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[dtimestwo]

We got an Oculus for Christmas and were intrigued by WIN reality so I signed up my DD who plays 16U. With restrictions due to COVID-19 team practice has been minimal so was looking for something more than just the tee work and such she does at home. Right now it’s only for pitch recognition as the bat attachments are just coming in for the hitting beta. There are quite a few modules that she goes through daily with a variety of pitcher types. She typically faces the college pitchers (just generic from what I can tell) since their velocity is higher. The modules vary from identifying the type of pitch coming off the hip, selecting when a certain color ball is being pitched at the hip, identifying where the ball crosses the plate and pitch type. 2 strike swing/no swing and a few others. It definitely feels like you are up against an actual pitcher and it’s been allowing her to “see” a good number of pitches daily in a fairly short amount of time. We haven’t had any games yet so it’s hard to say how helpful, if at all, it is for pitch/placement recognition. We’re both excited for the bat attachment to see how good the hitting modules will be. She does like it so far and thinks it will benefit from it.

 

[Tatonka]

Thank you for the report Dx2, I hadn't looked at it that closely so I appreciate hearing about the various types of modules. If we owned an Oculus already it would be a no-brainer. I really wish my DD's college program would get this since they are still very restrained regarding practices and competition due to the lockdown and pandemic fears.

 

[Westwind]

From another post:

Here are the extracts for two scientific studies on hitting. The first says that virtual environment batting practice was better than classic BP because of the variability that it provides.


The use of virtual environments (VE) for training perceptual-motors skills in sports continues to be a rapidly growing area. However, there is a dearth of research that has examined whether training in sports simulation transfers to the real task. In this study, the transfer of perceptual-motor skills trained in an adaptive baseball batting VE to real baseball performance was investigated. Eighty participants were assigned equally to groups undertaking adaptive hitting training in the VE, extra sessions of batting practice in the VE, extra sessions of real batting practice, and a control condition involving no additional training to the players’ regular practice. Training involved two 45 min sessions per week for 6 weeks. Performance on a batting test in the VE, in an on-field test of batting, and on a pitch recognition test was measured pre- and post-training. League batting statistics in the season following training and the highest level of competition reached in the following 5 years were also analyzed. For the majority of performance measures, the adaptive VE training group showed a significantly greater improvement from pre-post training as compared to the other groups. In addition, players in this group had superior batting statistics in league play and reached higher levels of competition. Training in a VE can be used to improve real, on-field performance especially when designers take advantage of simulation to provide training methods (e.g., adaptive training) that do not simply recreate the real training situation.

The second one used barriers and attentional cues which assisted hitters in increasing their launch angle.

What is the most effective coaching intervention for assisting a skilled athlete in modifying their technique? The present study directly compared 2 types of attentional cueing (internal focus [IF] and external focus [EF]) with a constraints-led approach (CLA) manipulation for teaching experienced batters to increase their launch angle in a baseball batting virtual environment. CLA training involved adding the constraint of a barrier that must be hit over and adjusting barrier distance and height based on performance. Following 6 weeks of training, the CLA group had significantly higher launch angle, higher exit velocity, more fly balls, and more home runs as compared with the other two groups. These variables were also significantly greater for the EF group than the IF group. For both the CLA and EF groups, there was a significant quadratic trend in the bat path angle variability across training blocks, whereas there was no significant change in this variable for the IF group. The CLA is more effective for changing the technique of a skilled athlete than attentional cueing alone because it promotes a greater degree of exploration of the perceptual-motor space. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

 

[whiporee]

It's been good for her being able to track pitches, but we've never gotten the swing sensor from Diamond Kinetics to make that addition to the program I don't know if they ever came out with it -- t was supposed to be February, but I never heard from them that it was available.

 

[Tatonka]

The girls college coach sent them home for the summer with The Diamond Kinetics bat sensor and a Pitchtracker ball and the sensor with the subscriptions. Haven't had a chance to play around with either one yet. Funny that you bring this up about syncing with WIN Reality as I was just wondering how (and if) that beta test version was improving? They did use GameSense over the winter for pitch recognition but I always felt (after having experienced the Occulus) that WIN Reality would be a step or three ahead. Not a replacement for live pitching of course but....

 

[Travis Lassiter]

We've been using WinReality for about three months now. It has helped tremendously with pitch recognition. We have the sensor and bat attachment. Since it's in beta they've gone through a lot of changes and it's been neat to see the additions to it as they've worked on it. It was a bit clunky to set up at first but it's gotten much much better. She honestly doesn't use the hitting part that much but works on the occlusion and pitch recognition several times a week.
On a side note I didn't realize till we have the Occulus how much dang fun the thing would be lol.

 

[monte38]

I know this is an older post, but can anyone who has used the Oculus for this answer my question - do you need the 256gb Oculus or can you get by with the 64g Oculus for this?