“What is real?… 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” ― Lana Wachowski, “The Matrix”

Anyone who follows me on social media knows I’ve been using the ACE Virtual Reality Shooting App on the Oculus Quest for the bulk of my dry fire training for roughly a year now. I was lucky enough to be a tester while it was still in early development, and I’ve been involved heavily with the company during their development of the app as it is now. The developers are also competitive shooters, and it shows. The physics are accurate, the guns behave incredibly realistically, and there are numerous drills and stages recognizable to any serious action shooter.

While there are a few ranges and stages in ACE meant to appeal more to the video gamer, this isn’t in my opinion a game per se. It’s really a training simulator for your shooting. And even the few “gaming” options are valuable for training. And the rest of the over a hundred stages and ranges include stages from major matches, steel challenge, USPSA classifiers, and even an Olympic pistol event. There are also drills for pure accuracy, sight acquisition, target discrimination and transitions. You will also find open ranges for working around vehicles and barricades as well as shooting at a wide variety of static and reactive targets. There are also many drills easily recognizable to the serious shooter, Bill drills, Blake Drills, Mozambique, FAST, Plate Racks, and more. And they are constantly adding new drills, stages, and practice ranges to the system.

In the year I’ve been using this app religiously in my dry fire training regimen, I’ve shot far fewer live rounds than in previous years, and still managed to finally make Grand Master in USPSA after being stuck in Master class for the bulk of my competitive career. I’m completely convinced this skill improvement is due to the effectiveness of the ACE App as a training tool. Used properly, it is a powerful addition to your practical shooting training regimen.

I’ve seen measurable, quantifiable improvements in both accuracy and speed since I started training with ACE. Where I feel the system really shines in two areas. One is visual processing speed. I feel like I can see more when shooting at my top speed than I could before incorporating ACE in my dry fire. The other, and the really groundbreaking one, is the feedback. Every hit or miss, every split, transition, draw, and movement is available as a data point for you immediately following your rep. This is a significant advantage over conventional dry fire, where it is far too easy to be dishonest with yourself about the quality of your sight picture or trigger press at speed.

Another benefit to using ACE, is the amount of productive reps that can be done. While the feedback is more akin to live fire, the number of repetitions that can be done are more akin to dry fire. In the approximately one year I’ve been using the simulator, I’ve fired 500,000 virtual “rounds.” Unless you’re Eric Grauffel, or have his support system and resources, that amount of live fire in a year would be logistically impossible.

The system does have its weaknesses of course. It is more difficult to remain target focused than in actual shooting, so you need to remain aware of this and intentionally over emphasize this in practice. Practicing reloads can be rather artificial, and although I’ve come up with a couple of work-arounds for them that I’ll explain later, you will still need to dry fire them conventionally. While OWB draws can be worked productively in ACE, I would recommend doing them in conventional dry fire as well to ensure that your index stays sharp. AIWB draws can’t really be done productively with ACE due to the controller size, so once again I spend time dry firing them with my real gun and holster. I’d also recommend doing trigger presses with your actual gun periodically to stay acclimated to the pull weight, reset, and travel.

Much like your training in live fire or conventional dry fire, you should have a plan for your sessions in ACE. Your practices should be purposeful, structured, and mindful. I’ve come up with an effective template for my training in ACE, based on my needs and goals. This may not be what you need at your current level of training, so figuring this out is very much an individual process. As your needs change, your training should as well, so make sure that you continually assess your strengths and weaknesses and make course corrections in your training as needed.

My practice sessions vary depending on what I have coming up. If it’s the day before a local match, or the week or two leading up to a major match, I’ll focus almost exclusively on consistent performance on demand using the more challenging and complex stages in ACE. What I would term combination drills.

If I’m a day or two away from teaching a class I’ll once again focus on on-demand consistency, but in this case I’ll replicate the drills I’m going to be demonstrating, using a mix of the drills and open ranges available in ACE, especially the Core Drills free range (which was put into ACE because of my suggestion).

If I’m not specifically preparing for an upcoming class or match, my training follows the training guidelines I teach in my classes and talk about in my book. My training sessions are typically pretty long now but that is something you have to build up to. Guard against doing so much that mental or physical fatigue sets in and you get sloppy.

A typical long training session in ACE for me might look something like this. First, I’ll shoot the “Drill of the Day” as a cold start to test my on-demand cold performance. This is valuable both as self-evaluation and for improving the all-important mental side of shooting. After this I’ll work on my fundamentals.

I will often start out with the Accuracy skill builder, a B8 center that moves out further every time you successfully shoot a 3-round string. I’ll do a set of this freestyle, a set strong hand only, and a set weak hand only. After that I like to work the Trigger Control at Speed drill in the “Zero Range.” I also usually do a set of this freestyle, a set strong hand only, and a set weak hand only. Then I’ll stay in the zero range and do doubles, a set each at five to thirty yards in five yard increments. My last drill in that range is Practical Accuracy, also done from five to thirty yards with a set at each distance freestyle, a set SHO, and a set WHO.

Then I’ll go into the “Core Drills” range, which was one of my suggestions to the ACE developers. In there I’ll do Gabe White’s Trigger Meets Sights transition drill, a set left to right and right to left each FS, SHO, and WHO. I’ll follow that up with Rob Epifania’s Transitional Doubles Drill, also done left to right and right to left. Before leaving I’ll work some Burkett reloads where I actually retrieve the magazine from my belt and tap it to the bottom of the ACE controller.

After that I’ll do draws in the Target Acquisition skill builder. I’ll work these with hands at sides, wrists above shoulders, and turning draws, making sure to hit SHO and WHO as well. I’ll stay in the Target Acquisition skill builder and work One Reload One to freestyle, SHO and WHO.

During the 1-R-1 reps, I touch my physical reference point for grabbing the fresh magazine to the baseplate of the magazine on my belt to ensure that I get the same range of motion in these as in my actual reloads in live fire. This is how I do reloads in any of the drills or stages that require them. I’ve found that as long as I complete the full range of motion and visualize an actual reload, there’s no negative training effect. It’s hard to quantify, but I believe that doing them this way builds at least consistency in my actual reloads, if not raw speed.

Then I’ll work basic skill drills in the “Drills” section of ACE. I’ll start with Bill, then Blake making sure to do both directions freestyle, SHO, and WHO. Then I’ll do the Gear Change drill to work on transitions in depth, making sure to hit every sequence. Sometimes I’ll add in plate racks, also done both directions freestyle, SHO, and WHO. I also have been putting in significant reps on Tim Herron’s Headbox Bill drill and Max Michel’s Transition Hell drill. I’ll often finish up this part of my practice with some reps on El Presidente.

Heading back to the Core Drills range, I’ll work short movements with the Bar Hop, Slide Step, and Short Burst movement drills. Then I’ll work on shooting on the move with the two Chasing Alphas drills before doing position entries and exits in the “Duel” free range. Sometimes I’ll finish up my basic movement work with the Steel Challenge stage Outer Limits. I make sure to work both directions evenly in all the movement drills I do.

I’ll then pick some stages, preferably ones with either movement or challenging shots, to run a few times as combination drills to build performance on demand. Time and energy permitting I’ll do quite a bit of these, three to five reps each.

I also like to do one or more of the “series” in ACE which consist of four to eight stages done once each like a virtual match. I use these to simulate on-demand performance at a match. Just like with the individual stages, I’ll do each series three to five reps each.if I still have time and I’m not too mentally or physically fatigued, I may work the Rogers Range style “Whackamole” free range or one of the other reactive ranges to build reaction time and visual discipline.

A couple of points that are in danger of being lost in translation here. One is the proportion of isolation to combination work. While that varies based on what I have coming up on my schedule, it isn’t as skewed in favor of isolation as it would appear from my explanation above.I do enough reps of combination work to make the proportions correct for my training. Another is that I will also often mix these in an interleaving training approach rather than complete them all in a block training sequence like the explanation above would make it seem.

Apart from my solo practice sessions, another feature of ACE that I find valuable is the ability to shoot with others in the simulation. This, coupled with the weekly virtual matches they organize helps with my mental game by adding in match pressure.

I’m now using ACE as my primary training modality for my shooting, and conventional dry fire and live fire as supplementary training. I’ve seen real and measurable skill gains, especially in consistency and on demand performance. More subjective and less quantifiable, but still apparent to me, are the improvements I’ve made in visual processing speed and my mental game. Overall, I have reached new levels in my training this last year. My performance has increased on the benchmark drills of practical shooting in practice, my match performances have improved, and I was able to make Grand Master in USPSA.

Simulators are used to train pilots, surgeons, soldiers and law enforcement. It stands to reason that simulation training done at a high level of sophistication would benefit practical shooters. If you approach your time in ACE as serious training, if you are mindful, focused, and visualize correctly in your sessions, then I guarantee you will see serious improvements in skill and performance. Hope to see you all in a match in the virtual world soon!