I have been spending a LOT of time doing dry-fire using ACE for the past few months. ACE is essentially a shooting simulator application plus 2011 shell for your Quest 2. There is no recoil simulation, but it occupies an interesting spot between dry-fire and live-fire due to the feedback you receive during the course of fire.

The hardware shell is extremely good. I wouldn’t call it perfect, but it feels and mostly behaves like a real gun. There is software tuning that alleviates common issues (mostly for reloads for me), and while the trigger is not quite as nice as a real one, it’s certainly good enough for dry-fire usage. All of the controls of a real 2011 are present, and it fits in real 2011 holsters. I use an Alpha-X holster with the BUL SAS II insert, and it fits quite nicely.

The software is similarly excellent. It is easily the best competitive shooting simulator I’ve had the opportunity to try (and I’ve tried a few), and the overall experience is very realistic. Where the ACE experience really exceeds static dry-fire is in how you get realistic feedback. You will not see your bullet holes on paper targets that aren’t in your face. Steel doesn’t fall if you hit it in the wrong spot. Moving targets move at the rates you see in real life. Basically, ACE avoids the pitfalls of laser trainers and gives you accountability that is sometimes lacking in classic dry-fire.

The limitations are really from the Quest 2’s hardware: the brightness floor and ceiling is not enough for an ideal red dot presentation (no HDR or Dolby Vision, basically), and the refresh rate is not as fast as your brain can process (but it’s reasonably close). This is early access software, so I expect that we’ll see some workarounds as time goes on, but the fact remains that VR is not going to perfectly simulate real life, and none of this is a deal-breaker. In a way, the dot visibility issues actually encourage you to NOT get overly focused on the red dot and to trust/build your index.

The stages are a mash-up of USPSA classifiers, Steel Challenge stages, and some outlaw designs. I like the variety, which also includes a long-burn steel stage, some carnival props, and even moving targets. There’s also a static target range and a 360 degree drone shooting challenge. I sympathize with the developers’ conundrum in that while I would personally prefer classifiers and stages that I’d see at matches, I can see how more mainstream users would be looking for something else. The room scale stages are a special treat, and I cleared out my basement just to be able to shoot them with real movement.

ACE isn’t cheap ($200 as of this writing), but I don’t really regard it as overly expensive as training tools go. Gaim is at least twice as much. I saw substantial improvements in real-life shooting performance from using ACE, and the weekly updates it receives only make it more useful. I feel like the shooting community has become a bit too cynical about new training tools, and if there was ever one to take a look at, ACE is it. I highly recommend it if getting out to the range for regular live-fire action shooting practice isn’t an option, and classic dry-fire has gotten a bit stale.