Bought a fun and potentially useful (I hope) virtual reality shooting simulator - was wondering if anyone else was using it...? Would love to compare notes.
Longer version:
Sometimes I don't really know in hindsight how I end up trying some newfangled thing out. But I guess I must have been bored at work and found myself checking out virtual reality shotgun simulations. Actually - I do remember, I'd recently tried a VR headset as part of the vision therapy I've been trying out and it was more cool than I'd expected. It was this that brought me back to thinking about whether there were good virtual reality Trap training tools at this point.
I'd seen the one that caught my eye in particular Clay Hunt VR before but hadn't really paid a ton of attention. For a while my at home practice was oriented around the DryFire system, and more recently a focus on eye exercises (which is still an ongoing experiment). But this time I went a bit down the rabbit hole on the "game," reading what seemed like pretty positive reviews from people who shot, not just ex players of Duck Hunt. Then I realized the headset it's compatible with (Quest) was coming out with a new version in a couple of weeks.
Before I knew it I'd ordered the headset, and the key peripheral for it - a "shotgun" frame that held the headset controllers and claimed to provide an authentic feel matched to your own gun. I've only been playing with it for a couple of days, but so far I'm really very impressed.
I've included a picture below of what the gunstock I bought looks like to go with. It doesn't look like much in the photo, but it makes the whole experience work. It's super adjustable, I was able to hold it up against my Perazzi and match most of the dimensions pretty accurately and then lock everything down. The stock and forend are real wood, and the whole frame weighs around 6lbs. Which isn't as much as my real gun, but gives a nice amount of heft - and you tend to "shoot" with less breaks than in real life so that weight adds up. You can add weights to bring it fully up to weight and add then front/back to achieve a desired balance point.
"Shooting" with it feels pretty realistic. It looks a bit ridiculous when you're holding it, but when you shoulder it in the game once everything is dialed in it feels pretty natural. You can look all around you so the experience is eerily immersive, at least for me. There are a ton of settings, so I'm still working on the most accurate way to configure things - but it seemed pretty realistic overall. I shot some skeet and sporting clays with the click of a button. Skeet in particular felt quite real (minus the travel and recoil).
I tried to include a short video - I'm not really sure how to capture it better yet from the headset - so it's clearly not perfect. In particular you might have to take my word for it that you can see the clays.
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Longer version:
Sometimes I don't really know in hindsight how I end up trying some newfangled thing out. But I guess I must have been bored at work and found myself checking out virtual reality shotgun simulations. Actually - I do remember, I'd recently tried a VR headset as part of the vision therapy I've been trying out and it was more cool than I'd expected. It was this that brought me back to thinking about whether there were good virtual reality Trap training tools at this point.
I'd seen the one that caught my eye in particular Clay Hunt VR before but hadn't really paid a ton of attention. For a while my at home practice was oriented around the DryFire system, and more recently a focus on eye exercises (which is still an ongoing experiment). But this time I went a bit down the rabbit hole on the "game," reading what seemed like pretty positive reviews from people who shot, not just ex players of Duck Hunt. Then I realized the headset it's compatible with (Quest) was coming out with a new version in a couple of weeks.
Before I knew it I'd ordered the headset, and the key peripheral for it - a "shotgun" frame that held the headset controllers and claimed to provide an authentic feel matched to your own gun. I've only been playing with it for a couple of days, but so far I'm really very impressed.
I've included a picture below of what the gunstock I bought looks like to go with. It doesn't look like much in the photo, but it makes the whole experience work. It's super adjustable, I was able to hold it up against my Perazzi and match most of the dimensions pretty accurately and then lock everything down. The stock and forend are real wood, and the whole frame weighs around 6lbs. Which isn't as much as my real gun, but gives a nice amount of heft - and you tend to "shoot" with less breaks than in real life so that weight adds up. You can add weights to bring it fully up to weight and add then front/back to achieve a desired balance point.
"Shooting" with it feels pretty realistic. It looks a bit ridiculous when you're holding it, but when you shoulder it in the game once everything is dialed in it feels pretty natural. You can look all around you so the experience is eerily immersive, at least for me. There are a ton of settings, so I'm still working on the most accurate way to configure things - but it seemed pretty realistic overall. I shot some skeet and sporting clays with the click of a button. Skeet in particular felt quite real (minus the travel and recoil).
I tried to include a short video - I'm not really sure how to capture it better yet from the headset - so it's clearly not perfect. In particular you might have to take my word for it that you can see the clays.
