I was heartbroken earlier this year when Supernatural, my favorite VR fitness app on Meta Quest, shut down. But now it’s making a comeback as an indie company. The new app returns this week in early access, with all the same trainers and a focus on getting the classic experience going again. But the funny thing is, just as it’s returning, the very nature of VR is starting to change.
Meta’s VR Glasses, coming next spring, promise to shrink down the future of Meta’s headsets to glasses-like form. And Supernatural’s team feels confident that slimmer, lighter hardware will be an excellent fit for fitness. If so, it could be the beginning of something new. More glasses-like devices on the horizon, including Meta VR Glasses, Google’s Xreal Aura and even Snap Specs, could enable virtual fitness experiences — and everything else VR has promised — in more portable forms that trap less sweat.
But in the meantime, I’m glad the app’s back for Quest. “We’re coming back because people raised their voices and started petitions and said we need this to be part of our lives. We wouldn’t be doing this if that hadn’t happened,” Leanne Pedante, Supernatural’s head of fitness and one of its in-game coaches, said to me of the new, smaller Supernatural team.
I talked to Pedante and James Senior, Supernatural Health’s CEO, about the new service and what else could be coming once Meta VR Glasses roll around next year.
What’s back with Supernatural, and what’s changed
The early-access version of the new Supernatural app — which will once again launch on Quest headsets — will gradually bring back the trainers and music tracks from the Meta-owned version. There will be thousands of workouts, and new 3D environments as well.
But the concept behind Supernatural, a rhythm-based set of song-driven choreographed game-like workouts with actual human coaches that talk alongside you, remains the same.
“That coaching you hear is coming out of a person who is physically experiencing the same thing that you are in the moment,” said Pedante, who feels that’s a key ingredient versus opting for an AI companion. “That creates this kind of invisible empathy — the coach is able to anticipate what you need to hear or what your body is probably doing.”
Those 3D landscapes were always one of the most compelling parts of Supernatural, but so were the trainers, who appear in 3D volumetric video before workouts and speak in your ears as you punch and swing to each song. I developed an emotional connection to my workout progress.
The songs are being relicensed but many familiar tracks are coming back, along with new ones. New workouts and content will follow soon after
“The music deals have really accelerated in the last three weeks,” he said. “We’re pretty much going to have the full catalog back that people have in the old service, and in the coming weeks, we’ll also be bringing back tracks that had disappeared from the Meta service over the last 12-18 months because of licensing restrictions.”
The original workouts have also been remastered for the new app, with better-synchronized beat mapping across existing Quest headsets. “Each has different components, which very subtly causes clock drift once it reaches the application layer in the platform. In the new app, we’ve built in new logic to account for that,” Senior added.
Senior also told me there’s a special comeback workout in which some of the trainers share their emotional journeys through leaving Meta and going independent, with songs chosen to fit their moods. He mentioned Good Feeling by Flo Rida, Celebration by Kool and the Gang and We are Family by Sister Sledge as some of the tracks.
But the price is going up to $200 a year, or $20 a month. Original “founding member” Supernatural users will get a $20 discount on the annual plan.
It looks like a lot of the previous features will be part of the package, too: Fitness history and achievements will come over, and although the new experience has a new companion phone app, it’ll still work for tracking heart rate during workouts. That’s another key part of what made Supernatural actually feel like a real fitness tool for me. But that app and the heart rate tracking aren’t available now. They’re coming later this year.
Meta glasses: The sign of the next wave
One big change down the road will be support for hand tracking. For now, the new Supernatural app still uses controllers to track hand movements during workouts. There’s a good reason for the shift: Meta’s VR Glasses, coming next year, won’t include controllers in the box. The next wave of VR could make hand tracking the default.
Supernatural’s team feels confident that hand tracking is now good enough to step in as a replacement — but also that Meta VR Glasses will be a way for Supernatural and other fitness apps to take a leap forward.
Meta’s upcoming $1,299 VR Glasses have a completely different design from Quest headsets: a glasses-like form with a tethered, phone-sized processing puck.
In a promo image for the new Supernatural, Pedante even poses with Meta VR Glasses. It’s a nod to where the Supernatural team thinks VR fitness is heading. Pedante and Senior see Meta VR Glasses as a perfect fit for where things are going for immersive fitness.
“It’s a lightweight device that’s highly breathable. It’s not susceptible to fogging. It has high definition and, frankly, it’s a device that’s perfect for the fitness use case,” says Senior, who previously worked at Meta on VR platforms.
It’s a bold claim. Until now, there hasn’t been a smaller-scale VR device that’s workout-capable. When I wore Meta’s VR Glasses last month, I wondered how well they’d be able to run apps such as Supernatural. Meta has already confirmed that fit accessories are coming for its VR glasses that could also make them easier to wear during activities such as workouts.
Where else could Supernatural end up?
Supernatural’s team is now independent and no longer tied exclusively to Meta. That opens the door to other platforms, although the VR landscape isn’t as big as it once was. SteamVR could be a possibility. So could Android XR. And perhaps even platforms that aren’t VR at all.
Senior confirmed that for now, Supernatural is still just a Meta app, but other devices are being looked at. I wonder about glasses-like hardware, such as Google’s imminent Xreal Aura or even Snap Specs. An app for Steam VR would be a big step, too.
“It’s this interesting, convergent zone of AR and VR,” Senior said of the Aura glasses, which feel a bit like VR and use different display technology from Meta’s VR Glasses, but a similar processing puck. “That’s an area we would want to experiment and lean in,” he said without committing to whether it might emerge there, too.
Clearly, Supernatural is aiming to be a killer app for Meta’s VR Glasses, and Senior said some of the headset’s features — higher-res displays and eye tracking — might also be incorporated into the experience.
I’m just excited to dive back in. As Supernatural followed its strange 2026 arc from being cast out of Meta to becoming a key app for Meta once again, I fell out of my own VR workout routine. But I’ll be putting the headset on again, and I’ll let you know what it feels like when I do.
