I'm sure you never tried it. DARPA seems to think VR training is useful, they've been cooking up programs for some time now.
You shouldn't be so quick to guess at someone's experience. I have used every simulator the Army fielded from 1974 through 2003. I am certified to instruct on some of them. 99% of what DARPA plays with never makes it to the field and none of the modified video games they have come up with is a satisfactory training event for dismounted ground combat. The conduct of fire trainers for the M1s and M2s are comparable to flight simulators pilots use and have their place, but they are not a replacement for firing the gunnery tables. Dismounted ground combat does not lend itself to a realistic simulation in the two dimensional world of a video game. There are too many variables that you just cannot write into code. If you could write it into code, it would require a massive amount of computing power to run it.
There's alot of things you can't learn shooting pop-up targets in a shoothouse.
There is a lot more to training for CQB then running through the shoot house. There are probably 100 or more individual tasks that each person must master before they are ready to start on collective training. Ever hear the terms crawl-walk-run? That is exactly how training works. It takes a multitude of different training events, both individual and collective before proficiency is attained. There is no one thing you have to do and one training event. There are many.
PC games are easy, not mliltary drills.
PC games are just that; games. They are not training for anything but playing the game.
I watched an IDPA match in person and was disappointed. All you do is shoot your pistol different ways. I figured I could get the same practice without coughing up money for entry fees.
Where are you going to get the learning that comes from interacting with the other competitors?
A work in progress, watching Todd Jarret and all the other guys on the internet was enough of a starting point for me to improvise my own ways. Technicaly instruction, but it was free.
Did you actually practice under the watchful eye of Todd Jarret on the internet? Of course not. So you have only your own interpretation of what you saw in a two dimensional representation to go from. How do you know it's right? One of the things you get from training with an instructor is that the instructor will be able to spot little things in your technique that you can improve on and help you improve.
None, I've only watched videos. But I've been doing martial arts for long enough to know when someone's body is too stiff or when they're lacking actual fighting experience.
Remember crawl=walk-run. Something you should know and understand from your martial arts background. Did you move smoothly and quickly the first time through?
Dynamic entries? Thousands, virtually, at least.
Then you haven't done any. Not even in a basic training environment where the walls are marked off with engineer tape on the gorund and walking through.
but there's a lot you can learn mentally. Cover vs. concealment, where the enemies likely to be during an entry and which target to prioritize, are examples.
What you learned was what the software designers thought was cover v. concealment and where the software designers thought that enemies were likely to hide and which targets the software designers thought should be prioritized. You learned a game, not reality.
How many did you do in the military? No sarcasm, I'm curious.
No live entries in the military, hundreds in training and dozens of real entries as a member of a police tactical unit.
I thought that was more of a paramilitary thing, but with warfare changing, maybe I'm wrong. How much practice will you get clearing rooms in Iraq?
Quite a bit actually. My son's experience in Iraq as an Infantryman with the 4th Infantry division was much closer to what I was doing as a member of a police tactical unit then my experience as an Army Infantryman. We didn't do MOUT that way in my day. We cleared rooms by killing everyone inside, things like firing through the door, cooking off a grenade and throwing it in and then shooting everyone upon entry were doctrine in my day. As the mission changed the military began adopting tactics that were developed by police tactical units and other military units with specialized missions. Almost a reverse of what happened when SWAT started in the early 1970s. In those days the police took from military doctrine and adapted it to meet their needs. As the military's mission changed, roles reversed and the military took from police doctrine.
I was under the impression that the situations where you meet resistance in that way were limited in any given tour. Correct me if I'm wrong.
As with all things military it depends on when and where. 2003 - 2007 things were pretty hot in a lot of different areas. Since 2007 things have calmed down in many areas.
Just throwing a suggestion out there. I think virtual combat can a lot of good. I'm willing to bet that in 20 years, it'll be a standard addition to training regiments. The military's been long since working with the gaming industry to come up with training software for soldiers.
And they have been failing at it. No good simulator exists now nor will it in the foreseeable future. That's why we still build training areas.
. ANyhow, I am thanking people for contributing and going over every post even the ones I don't respond to.. The Suarez International site looks pretty cool , have to review it more. I'm sure its beyond my means and skill level now, but I will put it on the backburner for the future.
