Back in January, my partner and I resolved to take exercise seriously. This would mean spending hours every week grunting, stretching and sweating our way to better health, which is something that is particularly difficult when you glance at the (weather outside and see dark clouds on the horizon. “Looks like it is about to rain, I guess I’ll go for a run tomorrow instead.” But then just as we were on the verge of giving up again, we discovered a brilliant new way to make exercise better: by turning it into a video-game.
SWIFT is a cycling game that you control by pedaling your real bike, which is fixed onto a device called a turbo-trainer. As you pedal, the trainer sends signals back to your computer or tablet to control the character on screen. And smartly, the game sends back instructions to the trainer to apply different levels of resistance, so that as you’re cycling up a hill in the game, you can actually feel it on the bike.
So one small garage renovation later and after signing up for a $12 per month subscription, we had our TV, bike and all-important cooling fan ready to go.
Once you’re set up, you can participate in virtual cycle rides in 3D-recreations of real places, like London and New York, or fictional locations. And importantly, other real human cyclists appear alongside you, sharing your journey.
The genius of the design is that it has used lots of the tricks of traditional video-games to keep pushing you a little bit further and harder: go a little faster, and you’ll be rewarded with a little achievement marker, and if you pedal harder, you might win a race against another real player. It’s essentially generating for same sort of dopamine hits that riding along on a traditional exercise bike simply can’t match.
I’m not the only person Who has noticed this. Today many other companies in the tech industry are chasing the same audience, and they all offer their own unique twists on the formula.
【小题1】Why does the author mention the weather in paragraph 1?| A．To show the lack of his own willpower. |
| B．To complain about the unstable weather. |
| C．To reveal the limitation of traditional exercise. |
| D．To illustrate the difficulties in fulfilling his resolution. |
| A．Monthly payment. | B．3D Glasses. | C．A real bike. | D．A turbo-trainer. |
| A．How SWIFT motivates its users. | B．Who are the target users of SWIFT. |
| C．What physical benefits SWIFT users gel. | D．Why traditional bikes are replaced by SWIFT. |
| A．Unclear. | B．Favorable. | C．Doubtful. | D．Intolerant. |
