 Okay, today we're going to do something completely different and experimental and hopefully a lot of fun. Using the latest virtual reality, we're going to ask the question about virtual sparring. Does it work and how close is it to the real thing? Let's do this. I'm probably not too different than many of you out there who are probably completely fatigued with being stuck at home for the past year and like many people have not been able to go to martial arts classes and get a proper workout. So today we thought if we can't go out to do our martial arts, let's try to go in into the matrix. So I just picked up the Oculus 2 headset. It is a fully self-contained virtual reality device that does not require a powerful computer or being tethered to a network of cables and it can even track your hand motions with remotes. Now for the record, this is not a sponsored spot. I was just playing with this recently and I downloaded a boxing game called Thrill of the Fight and after about 30 seconds of checking it out, I took it off and immediately decided this would be much better explored for the first time here on the show. So you guys are going to check the game out with me and we're going to judge at the end whether or not virtual sparring is an acceptable substitute for the real thing. We're going to judge this experience on a few different criteria. We're going to be looking quickly at three different game modes. The first will be the gym and training equipment, then a virtual sparring session and then stepping into the ring and seeing how it all comes together. I'm excited. Let's do this. Let's start with testing the speed bag. You'll see what that looks like. That's cool. When you actually hit this speed bag, you can actually feel the controller vibrate. So you get a little bit of an interesting... It's actually extremely responsive. Like it's very, very... The hit detection is tight. Except for there. What if I just stop it? I can stop it, reset it, just pop it. A bit of a warm-up. It beeps probably for uppercuts, jaw shots, body shots, temple shots. I have to say, this actually does kind of feel like working on a bob dummy a little bit. Like for a second, I forgot I wasn't looking at one. Okay, so you've got your target. You've got your solar plexus. You've got your chin. You've got your jaw, your temple shots. You've got the ribs. There was a sense over here that you got your ribs. Okay, this is kind of cool. Yeah, and the feedback, the way it vibrates when you hit it, it actually does kind of psychologically trigger that you're hitting a dummy. Hands up, pop, pop, lower, lower, burp, body, hit, hit. Same thing, you have to have the feedback when you hit it. The controller vibrates, gives you a little bit of feedback. It doesn't respond quite like a heavy bag. It actually feels a little bit obviously stiffer, heavier. It doesn't quite swing. It doesn't have the same give, but what do you expect? It's digital. It feels good to hit, though. Tell you that. You can totally get lost in doing this for a while. This would be a great workout. Ah, get some chain rattles. Good physics. Nice rubber banding, multi-directional. I like this. I can feel a little bit of feedback when I hit it. Since the depth does add to it, because I'm sure you can probably use this for, let's see how long you can use this for reaction time. Whoa, I went right into it. Yeah, I could definitely see you using this as a workout. We're going to take just a quick peek at these just to see what these are. Keep it clean at all times. Protect yourself at all times. Oh, this is some sort of a weird dungeon. And there's some sort of a shadowy figure in the corner. I can really make him out. Let's step back to the corner. Okay, let's see what this looks like. Oh, okay, he's like right in your space. He's right there. So, okay. Oh, I see. Okay, here's the machine. I only vibrate when he turns white, so maybe that's the reaction part. When he's dark, I can't actually... Oh, there's a ghost. So the reactions wait for him to turn light. Okay, this is really different. It's kind of wild. It does feel like someone is in front of me, so I can't hit him unless he flashes white, and I got to react before he does. Okay, cool. Let's check out what else we got. Whoa, okay, he just pops up right in front of me. All right, this is really, really off-putting, like the whole fight-or-flight response is kicking in. I can't get him far enough back. He leans in to bite and actually can anticipate the... I can actually anticipate the bite on my shoulder already coming in. You got him enough so he just can't get in. Oh! Knocked the zombie out. As clean as you can with someone with a pumpkin head. So I have to hit him in the head. His head broke open. That's not... That's messed. I know words. So work the body, so you hit the head, the head just deteriorates. Okay, so I've got to work the body. Who thinks of this stuff up? Yeah, this is definitely a workout. All right, we'll let Candlehead win. Let's try the sparring partner first. Let's see what that's like. Oh, okay. Like I said, it gets right in your personal space. Tell you one thing, it does feel like a person of mass is standing in front of me. I do have that inclination to want to move and get out of it. I feel a total violation of my personal space. So I have to find my groove here to find out what works in response. I don't appear to be able to check his hands at all. I mean, I have the total immersion and when he steps forward, that little jump, when you start the match, that little jump when they pop up in front of you, is a little bit of a startle effect. I actually feel like somebody is in front of you. And I will say, right when it's about to start, you get that little butterfly in your stomach right before our fight starts, right before our sparring match goes. This does kind of feel like I'm sparring someone. Get some combinations going. He's starting to bleed a little bit. Ladies and gentlemen, going to the scorecards the judges have determined by unanimous decision, your winner is the red corner. Yes. So you have to look for the same openings. They're popping you up. They give you opportunities. They're actually bruising me. You hit them. I almost had that stool. That's funny. I will say, it does feel like the person isn't front of me. I'm trying to wait for a real sparring partner to open up. And what's interesting is, he feels very different. The end of the Halloween character and the sparring partner. So that's easy. He's bleeding now. I just stepped on the edge of the rug right when I stepped in front of him. For a second, I thought I stepped on his shoe. It totally felt like it. Pop him. Pop him. Got him. Oh, he's down. Step back. Step back. Open up. Open up. Open up. Your winner is the red corner. Yes. Okay. So I was going to get cleaned up before I did this end part, but you know, I said screw it. Let's just keep this authentic. I'm legitimately sweating. That was a workout. You guys only saw a couple of minutes that I pulled out of this, but I did this recording about maybe 40 minutes to an hour. So how do we judge this overall? Let's get back to the criteria that we're going to judge this on. Okay. So level of immersion. This, this is what surprised me a little bit more. Like I've been playing around with other VR games. And I'm the type of person that once I get involved through a story adventure, I'm, I'm involved in it. So, but I'm going to say the level of immersion here was really good. Even though the graphics were cartoony and the people looked really fake, it was like almost creepy fake. I did have a sense that was in another environment. Like I kind of forgot I was just in the living room, you know, swinging around wildly. This actually felt like a ring. So I'm going to say the level of immersion, I'm going to give it a solid nine. And it's one of those games where you can't move around with your joysticks and the controller. Like if I wanted to move, I had to physically move. And that to me adds so much realism and immersion. I give this game a nine on that aspect. Hit detection. Hit detection. I'm going to say six. And that's really due to the limit of the hardware. You've got the two controllers. You throw a punch when you make contact. It gives you a little bit of vibration, haptic feedback. It registers that you make contact with something. The controllers also vibrate when they hit you. And when you're really starting into the wild swing of things, the things are just going, everything's just vibrating and moving at the same time. And it gets to the point where it's so much, it's not registering like it was. And obviously you can't feel when you get hit. I couldn't quite tell. There were moments where like when I got hit in the head, I couldn't tell the heads that was vibrating. I don't think it has that capability, but I think it's either the speaker making the sound that I felt the vibration of or just psychologically along with the remote. It did kind of feel like I was taking some shots, but not real shots. So I'm going to give it a six on hit detection just in terms of technology. As far as if we want to split this into different ways, since I hit detection on the opponent and myself, I'm going to give that a little bit better. I'm going to say like eight on that. I didn't really have any complaints about when I threw a punch, whether it should have connected or not. A lot of video games are weird with how they registered hit detection. This game was pretty on point. Even when like they brought, they had their gloves up and they opened up a little bit and you got that shot right in the center of the nose. It was pretty accurate. So I'm going to give hit detection in terms of hitting characters in eight, technology about a six. Game reaction time. I left this a little bit broader, but what I mean by this is game reaction time in terms of when I move, when I take an action, how long is there a delay at all? Is there any sort of lag? Do I feel like there's a disconnect? I'm going to say no. I'm going to give this game a solid 10 on that aspect. When I threw the punch, my hand flying through the air and me visually seeing the virtual globe flying through the air, it was in sync to me. Like I didn't have any moments where I was like I felt like I was getting the motion sickness or I felt like the hits weren't as responsive as they should have been. When I moved, the game moved. It was synced up very, very well and I'm actually really impressed at how tight the play control was in that aspect. So I give this game a solid 10 on reaction time. Limits of combat. Defensively, I was a little bit disappointed. The blocks were good. When I brought my hands up, I felt the block was accurate. I felt it was flexible. Same thing, blocking low. What I'm disappointed on is I kind of wished there were a little bit more parries where you could do a little bit more checking their front hand. It'd be awesome if you were able to kind of move and check and they pushed a little bit. That's the engine physics they didn't put into the game and things like that, but that's a minor complaint. As far as offensive moves, it was pretty open. The jabs across hooks worked really, really well. The body shocks really worked really well. The uppercuts were responsive. I even did some, you know, some like drumroll stuff and some silly stuff. It pretty much, the hands pretty much did anything I told them to do and if the target was open, the shot landed. So I was a little bit disappointed with the defense, but I was really impressed with the offense. So let's give that a solid eight. Opponent resistance. This surprised me. The Halloween characters, I didn't like as much. They just didn't seem to respond as well, but they had a clear purpose. They were there for training. They were training, testing endurance and speed and body shots. I get that. But the spying partner and the actual ring fight, I have to say the opponents responded pretty well. They weren't predictable. I found myself having to strategize, look for openings. You know, when I wanted to get to the face, I was like, okay, let me hit the body shot. And depending on how you hit the body, you know, they either dropped their hands down or they turned a little bit and it set you up for that shot. I liked that. I had to actually think about what I was doing. Yeah, there were times, of course, that the game was just out there swinging wildly just for fun. And I'm going to have to say it made me work. I had to work out hard. And this was just on the medium level. I haven't tried the harder levels yet. So I'm going to give that a solid eight. I think there's a little tiny bit of room for improvement, but I was pretty impressed with what it was. Overall realism, cartoony graphics aside, because obviously it doesn't look real and it doesn't really act real. So cartoony effects aside and graphics aside, I did feel like I was in that environment. I forgot my actual real surroundings and I was so focused on what was going on that, yes, I kind of did feel that level of immersion. As far as a realist expiring session, do I feel this was real? No. It doesn't feel like you're sparring a real person, not quite, but it's honestly a fairly close second because you do have to strategize. You do have to kind of work the reaction time and the spatial environment is a huge thing here. Being able to move in and out and get distance, there are so many times when they advanced, I wanted to move back. I had that fight or flight response when the match started. Like I said, I had the butterflies in my stomach. That anticipation came up. When it started for a second, I felt like I was stepping into a real sparring match. Once you play it for a little bit, that does kind of wane, but overall I'd say the realism that it portrays of a boxing match is pretty solid. I'm going to give that an eight as well. It's not a replacement for a real sparring partner, but unfortunately we do live in a time currently where a lot of gyms are closed and we don't always have access to live opponents right now. So given the context, I think this is actually a pretty decent substitute. So it's almost kind of like finding some middle grounds. So for all of you guys that are training at home, whether it's because your school is closed or you're just doing online training, I do recommend looking into something like this because even though it's not going to give you the application to a real person, it is going to work your reaction time. It's going to work your strategy and it's going to at least give you some sort of application model. There's some sort of tactile value of it. Thank you so much for watching. And if you want to see the full, complete play through, you can check that out as an exclusive episode on our Patreon and our YouTube membership program. Thank you all and we'll see you next week.