Three years ago, Pete wrote about the Practisim VR shooting simulator. Well, it has popped up again in the hands of probably the best dryfire practitioner on the planet, Liku_Tactical. If you recall, exactly one year ago, Liku_Tactical was flown from Japan to shoot firearms for the first time in his life with his mentor Lucas of TREX Arms. Well, he continues to practice and he is doing dry fire training with Practisim VR.

Airsoft as a training tool can clearly help a shooter which Liku_Tactical proved last year.

Well, now he is exploring dry fire training with Practisim VR which is a third party program for use with VR headsets like Occulus Rift. You also need tracked motion controllers so the computer knows where you are in 3D space and can interact with the virtual environment.

Dry fire training with Practisim VR goes beyond just a simple FPS (First Person Shooter) simulator. It is a virtual competition stage builder. You can build IPSC, USPSA, Pro-Am and Steel Challenge matches and stages. I always struggle with stage design and leave it to people who are more talented and experienced to do it. However, I can see how easy it is to set up a stage with this software and you can virtually move through the stage to see how the targets and props interact with the shooter. Designing a stage on paper requires a lot of imagination and often requires a bit of fine tuning on the day you build it in real life. 180-degree traps or sometimes targets might overlap. Or in the case of trying to obscure a target with a barricade, it only works well when you have someone look at the shooting position and physically looking at the target and someone else adjusts the partitions or barrels to make the stage as close to the designer’s intent. But with Practisim VR you can do all of it from your house.

Watch the video below. Liku_Tactical shoots a stage then shows a brief clip building the stage.

There are some issues with virtual training, there are no motion controllers that mimic recoil. Even though Liku_Tactical uses gas blowback recoiling airsoft guns it is not the same as real steel. However, recoil management is not that difficult to get used to which Liku_Tactical proved last year. The real benefit to Practism VR would be working on footwork and improving efficiency through a stage. Any time you can shave to clear a stage is good practice. As long as you have a big enough space you can dry fire train with Practisim VR without spending any money on ammo or gear.

If you are a PC gamer and a fan of competitive shooting, this could be handy especially in this climate where ammo is at a shortage and guns are harder to find or their price have astronomically increased.

And just as more proof that virtual practice can yield actual results, take a look at Jann Mardenborough’s journey from Gran Turismo video gamer to a professional race car driver