The fact that Picture-In-Picture scopes are so rare even within the game's assets shows a certain contempt for realism. I've never had to load bullets into my magazine one by one in Arma before. I've had to do that plenty of times in Escape from Tarkov. Red Orchestra also has more realistic scopes and gun mechanics.
Ok so to clarify VBS3. The individual soldier stuff is so-so. There isn't much training benefit to a soldier from loading a virtual magazine. There is however when something like VBS3 allows them to practice being a JTAC over their lunch break.
The really advanced bits are the range of equipment, combined operations and realistic scenarios you can create for it. Wanna recreate a local village, throw in realistic civilians and adversaries, match your convoy and run drills with multiple land, sea and air assets? No problem, easily done.
It's a good illustration of the difference between consumer products and simulators.
What reads as authentic to consumers is the moment-to-moment aesthetics like how guns handle or whether there's a percievable "stat" being modeled. The actual scenarios can be implausible or eliminate an inconvenient-but-important element, but if the overall experience repeatedly hits on the belief structure, it gets the "realism" moniker.
As a training tool, what matters is the big picture of how it supports key skills, conveys specific technical information, and enables new kinds of exercises to take place. A lot of consumer boardgames are great at developing strategic thinking even though their material is unrelated to any specific warfighting skill and the technical detail has been streamlined out; the reduction pushes the players to grapple with the consequences of every single move and play as far ahead as possible, often resorting to diplomatic options(deception or coalition-building) to get an advantage. Likewise most simulation tools do not require total simulation at fidelity, they need only the elements relevant to the training, so they can be incomplete as a portrayed experience of the scenario.
The fact that Picture-In-Picture scopes are so rare even within the game's assets shows a certain contempt for realism. I've never had to load bullets into my magazine one by one in Arma before. I've had to do that plenty of times in Escape from Tarkov. Red Orchestra also has more realistic scopes and gun mechanics.