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 li

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.