I’ve played with VR since I bought a Samsung headset to go with my Galaxy S7 many years ago. I goofed around with it for a while, there was an interesting clay shooting game, but without a gun, it felt like shooting trap as Cyclops from the XMen (tap the side of the visor to shoot). I briefly bought a Quest 2 a few years back to see the improvements, and decided it wasn’t worth it just to watch pron, and returned it.
But when my little brother (a Staff Sgt, 2nd Recon, Res - and a civvy firearms instructor) recommended STRONGLY that I check out the ACE XR VR Shooting Sim that was just released for the Meta Quest, I did, and long story short, I bit. ACE XR was designed from the ground up to be a tool for competitive pistol shooters. When you buy the membership, they provide a simulated handgun, roughly the shape of a Sig 320, weighted to simulate the real thing, with a 3lb trigger and tactile reset, and a “functioning” mag release. Once you put the headset on, you’re at the range, with a Stacatto with irons in your hand. You can go to a number of practice stages, from sight acquisition to accuracy training, step into a practice scenario, where they give you a stage to shoot with instructions, or jump over to a Hickok 45 style walls of steel type range, with Plate racks, Texas stars, popper, and moving targets at various distances. After progressing through a few stages, you unlock more guns and the ability to add/remove accessories. The practice stages are varied and interesting. Theres a beeper to get you started, and at the end of the stage, the targets show your shot placement, along with your score/misses/penalties.
You can also compete with friends who have the system.
So far I’ve only spent about 3 hours in it, so these are my first impressions: This is not a game, it is a training simulator, and a damn good one. After an hour. My shoulders are sore from locking in my stance, and holding up the gun. The functioning of the gun feels as real as it can. Obviously no recoil, but you can stage the trigger (to a point - see my cons), hit the mag release to drop a mag, and smack the bottom of the grip to seat a new one. A lot of care has been put into making sure the bullet hits where the sight lands. Engaging small targets beyond 30 yards is as challenging as it is in real life. Rush the shot or forget your fundamentals and the “game” punishes you. But overall, it’s the closest anyone has ever gotten to the real deal. Kudos to the ACE team for inventing this!
Now the cons, it’s kinda expensive. $19/mo billed annually (so about $250 by the time you pay $15 shipping for the “free” gun accessory). PLUS the cost of the Meta Quest (I ended up buying a used Quest 2 off FB Marketplace for $150). This is a brand new product, so it’s probably smart of them to start this way. Basically the cost of a case of 9mm. But I think that will turn some people off. The system keeps track of the total shots fired, and so far I'm just shy of 2k, or about $500 in savings. I’m interested to see if a month of shooting this helps with my speed with a real handgun. The controller is mostly excellent, but the gun will fire prematurely if you stage the trigger for too long. I’m exploring settings options to improve this, but I think I can also remove a little material from the gun to solve this problem (the Meta controller fits into the gun accessory, and when you pull the trigger on the gun, a small lever depresses the controller trigger). Lastly, the instructions aren’t very good. For my first hour, I was ready to send it all back, because I could feel that the grip of the gun was all wrong when the sights were lined up. Then I found the setting where you tell the app which gun accessory you have. By default it selected gen 1 (which they don't sell anymore). Once I changed it to Gen2, everything lined up perfectly. There should be a selection in the tutorial at the beginning that asks you which accessory you have. And speaking of the tutorial, it isn’t current with the gun accessory they ship. One part of it tells you to activate the slide release. I spent 5 minutes trying to activate it, only to discover that I had to use the B button on the Meta controller. Once I switched to the correct gun accessory in the settings, the act of seating a mag, also puts the gun int battery. I wish the trigger was adjustable. I’d love to make it a little heavier to approximate some of my guns with factory triggers. Last con is kind of a personal pet peeve and has nothing to do with how well the app works - but you can point the gun accessory at yourself and pull the trigger and it fires. No penalty, no warning. The Mr. Safety in me thinks that they should kick you out of the current stage for that, or at least add a pop up, that says, “don’t be a dumbass”
So, any other early adopters here? I tried a search, but couldn’t find any mentions.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vARWFvDKa_Y
But when my little brother (a Staff Sgt, 2nd Recon, Res - and a civvy firearms instructor) recommended STRONGLY that I check out the ACE XR VR Shooting Sim that was just released for the Meta Quest, I did, and long story short, I bit. ACE XR was designed from the ground up to be a tool for competitive pistol shooters. When you buy the membership, they provide a simulated handgun, roughly the shape of a Sig 320, weighted to simulate the real thing, with a 3lb trigger and tactile reset, and a “functioning” mag release. Once you put the headset on, you’re at the range, with a Stacatto with irons in your hand. You can go to a number of practice stages, from sight acquisition to accuracy training, step into a practice scenario, where they give you a stage to shoot with instructions, or jump over to a Hickok 45 style walls of steel type range, with Plate racks, Texas stars, popper, and moving targets at various distances. After progressing through a few stages, you unlock more guns and the ability to add/remove accessories. The practice stages are varied and interesting. Theres a beeper to get you started, and at the end of the stage, the targets show your shot placement, along with your score/misses/penalties.
You can also compete with friends who have the system.
So far I’ve only spent about 3 hours in it, so these are my first impressions: This is not a game, it is a training simulator, and a damn good one. After an hour. My shoulders are sore from locking in my stance, and holding up the gun. The functioning of the gun feels as real as it can. Obviously no recoil, but you can stage the trigger (to a point - see my cons), hit the mag release to drop a mag, and smack the bottom of the grip to seat a new one. A lot of care has been put into making sure the bullet hits where the sight lands. Engaging small targets beyond 30 yards is as challenging as it is in real life. Rush the shot or forget your fundamentals and the “game” punishes you. But overall, it’s the closest anyone has ever gotten to the real deal. Kudos to the ACE team for inventing this!
Now the cons, it’s kinda expensive. $19/mo billed annually (so about $250 by the time you pay $15 shipping for the “free” gun accessory). PLUS the cost of the Meta Quest (I ended up buying a used Quest 2 off FB Marketplace for $150). This is a brand new product, so it’s probably smart of them to start this way. Basically the cost of a case of 9mm. But I think that will turn some people off. The system keeps track of the total shots fired, and so far I'm just shy of 2k, or about $500 in savings. I’m interested to see if a month of shooting this helps with my speed with a real handgun. The controller is mostly excellent, but the gun will fire prematurely if you stage the trigger for too long. I’m exploring settings options to improve this, but I think I can also remove a little material from the gun to solve this problem (the Meta controller fits into the gun accessory, and when you pull the trigger on the gun, a small lever depresses the controller trigger). Lastly, the instructions aren’t very good. For my first hour, I was ready to send it all back, because I could feel that the grip of the gun was all wrong when the sights were lined up. Then I found the setting where you tell the app which gun accessory you have. By default it selected gen 1 (which they don't sell anymore). Once I changed it to Gen2, everything lined up perfectly. There should be a selection in the tutorial at the beginning that asks you which accessory you have. And speaking of the tutorial, it isn’t current with the gun accessory they ship. One part of it tells you to activate the slide release. I spent 5 minutes trying to activate it, only to discover that I had to use the B button on the Meta controller. Once I switched to the correct gun accessory in the settings, the act of seating a mag, also puts the gun int battery. I wish the trigger was adjustable. I’d love to make it a little heavier to approximate some of my guns with factory triggers. Last con is kind of a personal pet peeve and has nothing to do with how well the app works - but you can point the gun accessory at yourself and pull the trigger and it fires. No penalty, no warning. The Mr. Safety in me thinks that they should kick you out of the current stage for that, or at least add a pop up, that says, “don’t be a dumbass”
So, any other early adopters here? I tried a search, but couldn’t find any mentions.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vARWFvDKa_Y
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![[laugh]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/012.gif "Laugh [laugh]")
. Agree that it’s a valid tool, and a great way to get some cheap, quiet practice, with great facsimiles of my real guns. But it still feels like a PITA sometimes fiddling with the tiny bbs, and green gas/co2. By the time I get all the stuff together, set up the targets, take them down, put it all away, I’d almost rather bring the real stuff to the range 5 mins away. 
