Continuing the thread of virtual-reality mapping onto reality, I've been playing a VR title called Dragon Fist for several months now.

I think of it less like a game than a cardio work out tool. Each session takes no more than 30 minutes before I sweat too profusely to continue.

What this game gives me that I can't get in real life is a sparring partner. Now that I get to put my Wing Chun skills to use again, I have some revelations to report.

Distance

Distance management is half of an entire melee fight. The masters who teach martial arts almost never address the distances of which executions should take place. Practitioners only learn this the hard way, by whiffing (punching from too far) or taking a punch.

In my case, being skilled amounted to nothing when I was nervous about opponent getting too close. I ended up striking at my maximum reach (or even too far away) when I should've let him get closer to eat more of my attacks.

When done wrong, I overly extend myself and deliver underpowered strikes. The right thing to do is to welcome opponent into my zone.

One trick is to not focus on the opponents face. It's harder to judge distance looking straight. Instead, focus on his feet. It's easier to tell if he is in the right zone. I don't know if professional fighters do this though.

Fighting styles

In Dragon Fist, computer opponents come in many fighting styles. Most of them are different Chinese styles, some Japanese and a couple of Western boxers.

When I first started, I needed only a handful of Wing Chun moves to neutralize them. As I upped the difficulty, being too simplistic became inadequate.

Confirming my suspicion, different fighting styles cannot be taken on in the same way. Think of it like rock/paper/scissors. I started to fight some opponents with pure boxing instead. That worked out well.

At this point I was ready to conclude Wing Chun (and any overly elaborate martial art) is impractical in real-life application.

And then I upped the difficulty again, boxing became inadequate once more. It became clear later that boxing works like a sniper rifle. A strike that lands is damaging, but reload is lengthy. In boxing-speak, each strike requires commitment.

This is effective when the opponent adopts a style that opens him up widely, allowing easy entry to his face.

Against styles that are not, I selectively defer back to Wing Chun. At a higher level, I manged to execute Wing Chun like an assault rifle, or maybe even SMGs. Each strike isn't as damaging as a committed boxing punch; but reload speed is short, so opponent has to eat more punches in the same amount of time.

Peripheral vision

If opponents approach from the side, I am as good as blinded.

This is could be a VR-only issue, where visual field is severely limited.

Ironically, good Wing Chun supposed to be blind-proof. So this aspect is a huge unknown to me.

Sparring is non-optional

This game and my VR gear pays for itself just having made melee fighting possible.

Without sparring, learning martial art is no better than learning to dance.