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I Rode Saga’s HoloBike and Things Got a Little Weird

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Matson told me that he finds wearing a headset to be too cumbersome when you’re working out. In particular, parents told him that they can’t check out with VR because they need to know what’s going on around them. However, I prefer to not have any distractions, mainly because I’m horrible at exercise and will take any excuse not to do it.

High-endurance athletes may find Saga’s offerings a bit slim, too. Matson says the company plans to ship the bikes with three to four trails in the system, each about 20 kilometers long. This is not very many rides, and those rides are not very long. By way of contrast, NordicTrack has an extensive library of rides of all lengths, levels, and programs, which also increase resistance and move up and down as you ride. Other bikes integrate with Zwift, the immensely popular online cycling platform, or collect intensely granular data that allows you to improve your fitness.

Closeup view of the handle bars and large screen attached to an indoor exercise bike

As of yet, HoloBike doesn’t do any of those things. The augmented technology, however, certainly makes what you’re seeing seem more real. And in some circumstances, not being real is a bonus. If all the trails are virtually generated, I’d love to have the ability to safely traverse places I wouldn’t otherwise go, like the streets of Mumbai, or even something entirely fictional, like a delivery route from Paperboy, or Elliott’s big take-off from E.T.

It would be cool if there were a possibility for users to design or contribute trails, too. I joked to Matson that they should make some version of a trail that goes all the way around the world, so you could circumnavigate the globe over the course of a year’s worth of rides, only to have him suggest creating a little onscreen pedal boat for when you’re crossing the Atlantic. With the HoloBike, the world really is entirely open and limitless. That’s enormously exciting.

That being said, the bike’s starting price tag on Kickstarter is $2,599, with expected delivery in the winter of 2024-2025. That’s comparable to other video-enabled stationary exercise bikes, but a lot to shell out for potential. If I’m going to ride a bike, I need something that approximates the feeling of the open road a little more closely, and for a little bit longer.

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Rebel Moon Part 2 isn’t the epic sci-fi sequel we hoped for – here are 3 better sagas to stream

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Rebel Moon – Part 2: The Scargiver, the second instalment in Zack Snyder’s Star Wars-scale epic, is getting some decidedly mixed reviews. The Guardian says that while it’s fun, it’s also bombastic and derivative, Variety says the story’s worse than the first one but the battles are better, and Empire Magazine pretty much cuts it in half with a laser sword that just happens to resemble a lightsaber.

According to the film magazine, the sequel is “marginally better than Rebel Moon – Part One, but still a weird, messy and humourless sci-fi”. Empire isn’t exactly waiting with bated breath for more movies, describing the tease of further adventures as “half-arsed” and saying that the second movie “gives you little reason to cheer the potential continuation of this Snyderverse“.

If that’s blasted a hole in your weekend viewing plans, don’t worry. There’s plenty of fun sci-fi movies for you to stream. Here are some of our favorites streaming right now on Netflix in the US (not in the US? We’ve also included where you can watch them in the UK and Australia).

The Matrix

With a fifth part of the trilogy now in development, it seems like an eternity since the original Matrix movie shook up sci-fi cinema and introduced us to bullet time. But despite its age this remains an incredibly fun sci-fi actioner, and it’s largely free of the pseudo-religious talky bits that weighed down the increasingly ponderous sequels. I re-watched this recently and I’d forgotten how funny it is, intentionally and otherwise. There are some great zingers in the script and Keanu’s seriousness is often accidentally amusing. But what really makes this a must-watch are the kinetic action sequences. Time hasn’t made them any less enjoyable.

Also available on Now TV in the UK and Prime Video in Australia.

Jurassic Park

It’s easy to forget that this is a sci-fi movie because, well, dinosaurs. But of course the dinos here are science dinosaurs, brought back from extinction via the power of preserved DNA and with considerable help from scientists who weren’t at school on the day the class were taught about hubris. It turns out that if you put incredibly dangerous things in a theme park and then cut every corner that can conceivably be cut, things are likely to go very wrong in a “aaagh munch munch munch” kind of way. And despite the cast’s best efforts, you’ll spend most of the movie rooting for the dinos rather than the humans.

Also available on Now TV in the UK and Netflix in Australia.

Godzilla

Some of the best sci-fi takes real-world fears and puts them in mythical monsters, and you don’t need to do much analysis to see why a city-smashing monster became such a key part of Japanese pop culture. Grant Edwards’ take on the legendary monster movie is a lot of fun, a modern take on 1950s monster movies that delivers an exciting and satisfying climax. It also feels very much like a Spielberg movie in the way it takes time before the big reveal, making it a kind of Jurassic Park set in an entire city.

Also available on Now in the UK and Binge in Australia.

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