Heart beating rapidly and palms sweaty, I put my bat down on the ground. Finishing a round of batting practice always makes me feel exhausted. I take a seat on the ground and take off my virtual reality headset. WIN Reality is a growing technology for baseball and softball training.

WIN Reality is a virtual training program to serve athletes live hitting reps whenever and wherever they are. Purchasing WIN Reality comes with both access to the program and a bat attachment. Although athletes can train without a bat, it is ideal for a more realistic hitting experience. The process of operating the WIN Reality is simple: one puts on the VR headset, connects the attachment to the bat and opens the application.

Upon opening WIN Reality, I was immediately immersed in a lobby with bright lights and hyper music. At the start, athletes can choose either baseball or softball for a sport as well as their age group. For me, I chose 16u softball. Specifying the default settings will help the user see accurate pitching based on their real life playing experience. 

An interesting part about WIN Reality is that the pitchers are real humans, not AI generated, and are drawn from top teams across the country. WIN Reality uses a pre-recorded video of a holographic person pitching. The ball then comes to the player as the batter at the accurate speed they pitched.

Despite the effort to simulate real life training of sports, WIN Reality is not the program for players who are struggling and want to work on mechanics and techniques. One can easily hit home runs by just meeting the ball on time and square. The program does not track anything else besides the bat.

Tracking the ball is a big part of baseball and softball, as well as the program. From my experience, it feels visually difficult to watch the ball to bat. WIN Reality resembles closely to a video game, so I then naturally feel like I do not need to execute all my mechanics. Often, during a batting practice session on WIN Reality, I do not track the ball to my bat, so I worry that it will create bad muscle memory and show in real-life softball games. 

WIN Reality serves athletes a variety of ways to train. Each session serves a different purpose from hitting certain types of pitches to recognizing strikes and balls and much more. With technology advancing everyday, sports will follow with innovative ways of training. 

WIN Reality is used across the country in numerous colleges and throughout the MLB. The program was great when I needed live pitching and did not have someone available to throw balls at me. Though it has some minor flaws, WIN Reality is a useful baseball and softball tool for any athlete looking to enhance their abilities.