Likewise hundreds of Iraqi soldiers who scramble from their muddy spider holes to hop into their tanks when they realize the shelling is not a precision air attack. Helicopters show up for about six minutes, but the blowing sand shoos them away. Fixed-wing aircraft are deep into another battle behind Iraqi lines. To enter the battle, the general can pick any vehicle and see what that driver would see. As in the real battle, a low hill might hide a tank.
Views are blocked, important things hidden, nothing is clear, everything is happening at once.
But in the virtual world you can mount every soldier's dream of a flying carpet and zoom around high above the action. Go up far enough and you get a maplike God's-eye point of view. The truly demented can enter the simulation sitting astride a missile madly arching toward its target. It's just a three-dimensional movie right now. Without the ability to what-if, The Battle of 73 Easting simulation is a very expensive and fanatical documentary.