Our Experiential Enhancements

Expert third party integration is one of our signature value-adds, with Myzone® Heart Rate Monitoring and the FitboxVirtual® playback system topping our most wanted. In fact, FitboxVirtual® has proved so popular we now integrate it as standard with most immersive installations, letting clubs maximise studio usage and leverage their existing tech by supplementing immersive offerings with Les Mills’ first-rate Virtual content.

Since this involves using standard format virtual video on a panoramic immersive screen, we’ve devised some added extras for an equally seamless and engaging experience. First, we programme projectors to automatically reconfigure themselves so that standard format virtual content is correctly divided and output between each unit. This means a perfect image with no downtime or manual crossover when it’s time for a virtual class.

Second, since standard format virtual content only partially fills the curved cinematic screen, we’ve designed an RGBW spotlight feature that produces a clever coloured infill effect on the blank remainder of the screen. This ensures virtual content retains its visual impact and class goers still feel immersed.

In fact, though many operators like their studios as dark as possible to keep riders 100% focused on the screen, others have found that intelligent Feature & FX Lighting can supercharge the immersive experience. We create user-friendly, kinetic light features that intensify the sensation of momentum in Les Mills’ forward-motion graphics using a range of digital strips, batons, and LED tapes with individually controllable pixels. (Village Hotels were first to leverage studio lighting for immersive fitness, with overhead RGBW digital strips extending the tunnel-effect produced by the video content into the studio itself).

Likewise, illuminating raked tiers of bikes looks incredibly cinematic while serving a Health & Safety function as well, since it lets riders find their way to and from bikes in a darkened studio without breaking the immersive spell. Or we can design an audio-linked Graphic EQ light effect to give an extra visual dimension to the beat by engaging riders’ peripheral vision in time with the music.

Holding our functional add-ons together are Auto-AV and Control-AV, the proprietary Hutchison-t technology that gives live instructors the ability to control projectors, lights, video and music from a simple bike-mounted iPad, or to schedule the AV to activate and run itself for virtual classes in advance.

Ready for round two?

In 2017, Alliance Leisure, in partnership with Lancaster City Council, saw a 419% rise in member visits to the Salt Ayre Leisure Centre following a redevelopment that includes a regularly packed Les Mills immersive studio as one of its champion draws. With proof that investment in next-gen facilities can help rally community engagement and hit health targets better than a routine refurb, the scene looks set for the next wave of Les Mills IMMERSIVE FITNESS uptake throughout Europe’s most progressive studios, gyms, and local authority centres.

With a revolutionary concept and content from Les Mills, and end-to-end project ownership, core immersive spec, and a catalogue of high-level enhancements provided by Hutchison-t, will you be joining us on your own trip into the future of immersive fitness?