Virtual branches are similar to Git branches, except that you can be on several at the same time. So instead of having to determine if you are on a bug fix branch or your feature branch or a coworkers feature branch that you're reviewing, you can actually apply all of them as though they were merged but not have to commit a merge into your history or unroll a test merge. This isn't how git branch shows you data, but it's more or less the same data that most Git clients have around branching.