Parkinson's and virtual table tennis - introduction and tips

 Word has long since got around that table tennis is one of the few effective and non-drug therapies for treating Parkinson's symptoms.

The self-help group PingPong Parkinson has been dealing with this topic for a long time and now has around 1.000 active players as members. One of the main tasks of PingPong Parkinson is to bring interested players and committed clubs together. What appears to be an easy task in urban areas often turns out to be an insurmountable hurdle in rural areas. The distances between the club's headquarters and the player's place of residence are usually too great or there simply aren't any carpooling opportunities. 

But with the increasing application possibilities of VR software (virtual reality), combined with a falling price of the necessary devices, we are currently experiencing a paradigm shift. From the very beginning of computer games, sports simulations have emerged today that have reached an unprecedented level of realism in the virtual world.

First and foremost is the table tennis simulation Eleven TT, which is unparalleled in terms of its realism and is gaining more and more recognition as a “real” sport on both a national and international association level.

PingPong Parkinson recognized this in good time and offers together with the Parkinson-Journal and the German portal Eleven Germany even offers rankings and tournaments to ambitious users. (pingpongparkinson-vr.de).

The following article shows the possibilities in this system, also and especially for people suffering from Parkinson's disease, and where the borders and differences between the real and virtual world still lie.

Source: Lüder Hoppe, https://youtu.be/EjVKhGb-Z1E

 Munich, December 12.12th 2022, Jurgen Zender

Those who prefer text to images will find them Video transcription here (reading time approx. 6 minutes)