SCHOFIELD BARRACKS — The rooftop sniper shot Master Sgt. Jim Guzior a couple of times as the soldier maneuvered through courtyards under a gray, cloudy sky in northern Baghdad.

But Guzior suffered only some sweat yesterday as he sighted down his M-16 rifle looking for the enemy in a virtual battlefield. In his headset monitor, he was darting down alleyways; in reality, he was practically standing still.

Had eight other squad members been with him in the simulation, Guzior would have recognized their faces in the virtual world.

In a nearby trailer, meanwhile, Humvee driver Spc. Thomas Brown, 24, and gunner Spc. Carleton King, 28, were part of a four-vehicle convoy that had just taken fire in a sector of Baghdad known as Dogwood.

"Hey, keep an eye on that overpass," said Brown, of Renton, Wash.

"I've got the road covered," King said as he spun his topside gun turret. The sound and recoil of his .50-caliber machine gun were simulated as convoy radio chatter blared in the background.

Simulator training has been in wide use by the military for years, but the technology is improving by leaps and bounds. And the Army is buying it to give soldiers a degree of battlefield realism and training without the actual danger.

The Army's Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training & Instrumentation has a budget of more than $1.9 billion.

A Stryker simulator costing nearly $900,000 was set up at Schofield Barracks last month. The nearly 4,000-soldier Stryker brigade at Schofield is preparing to deploy to Iraq in December, along with other units.

'IT'S REAL GOOD'

All but 17 of the brigade's 328 expected Stryker eight-wheeled armored vehicles are on O'ahu. Among recent arrivals within the past week were nine mobile gun system variants, each with a 105 mm gun, which makes the vehicles look like tanks — only with wheels instead of tracks.

King, who's heading out on his third deployment to Iraq, said the virtual convoy trainer is good practice.

"It's real good. Somebody who's never been downrange before in theater, it's good for them to get this under their belt," said the Washington, D.C., man.

The new Stryker vehicle driver trainer has a realistic compartment with a top hatch that can be propped up for open-air driving or closed down tight. A series of slots protected by ballistic glass provide the view.

The simulator sits on six piston legs and can mimic the feel of the 19-ton Stryker down to minute vibrations. At the other end of the scale, a rollover can be simulated. Big 6-by-5-foot wraparound screens provide a nearly 180-degree view of what's ahead.

"It's safe. They can try different maneuvers with their vehicles which are hard to replicate in (actual vehicle) training and are dangerous to replicate," said Lt. Col. Mike Staver, the simulations officer for Schofield's Battle Command Training Center. "If they crash, we reset the simulation and start over."

The center was dedicated this year in honor of 1st Lt. Nainoa K. Hoe, a 1995 Kamehameha Schools graduate who was fatally shot by a sniper in Mosul, Iraq, on Jan. 22, 2005.

Yesterday, Pfc. Jason Call, 22, from Salt Lake City, was taking his first spin behind the wheel of the Stryker driving simulator.

"It's pretty close (to the real thing)," Call, who has not been to Iraq before, said afterward. "There are some minor differences, obviously, but it was pretty accurate with the brakes, how it pulls down when you hit the brakes and when you hit the gas it pulls back."

EXPERIMENTAL SYSTEM

A new view for Call was of birdcagelike "slat" armor enclosing the vehicle and projected on the screens. The extra armor adds 5,000 pounds to the Stryker's weight, but it can deflect rocket-propelled grenades.

The Stryker brigade has been training without the slat armor on O'ahu and during recent deployments to the Big Island, but is expected to get four sets to train with before the entire unit leaves in July or August for a couple months of training at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif.

In the Virtual Squad Training Center, an experimental system being tested by the Army, soldiers wear full combat gear and a headset monitor to interact with and even see their buddies' faces that are programmed onto the other soldiers in the simulation.

They move by pressing a video-gamelike joystick. The system knows where they point a rifle and if they kneel or lie down.

The $2.4 million convoy training center, which was used last year for the deployment of more than 7,000 Schofield Barracks soldiers who are now in Iraq, simulates a four-vehicle convoy.

For King, swiveling the .50-caliber gun turret in the simulator and working up a sweat in a virtual Baghdad, it was training for what he's already done for real.

King said "it's tough, it's real tough" to go back to Iraq a third time. He plans on getting out of the Army after this deployment, but sees the evolution of simulator training as beneficial.

"When we went (to Iraq) the first time in '03, we had none of this. It's good for the soldiers," he said.

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.