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Army collective SBT uses physically simulated military equipment (PSME) or virtual military equipment (VME)

• PSME approaches, such as CCTT and AVCATT, attempt to replicate the physical environment, controls, and sensory cues of an actual tank or aircraft. PSME development, use, and maintenance are expensive, and soldiers' access to PSME equipment may be limited.
• VME uses personal computers and other equipment in ways similar to commercial first-person-shooter games. These have less physical realism but are easier and less expensive to operate, maintain, and upgrade and are more accessible to soldiers, allowing for more practice.

While stakeholders value physical fidelity, psychological fidelity may be most important

• High physical fidelity does not necessarily produce better training. Psychological fidelity — the degree to which the simulator prompts relevant cognitive, behavioral, and affective responses — is key to effective learning and training transfer.
• Low physical fidelity can be effective if psychological fidelity is high. This is especially the case for collective tasks that involve largely cognitive skills, such as monitoring others' actions and synchronizing activities.

Additional measures are needed to evaluate effectiveness of SBT

• Training evaluation has emphasized performance of the simulator and relies on users' reactions rather than on the performance of trainees and objective performance measures. Additionally, research on learning principles in SBT has lagged development of the technology.
• VME is much less expensive than CCTT and AVCATT once utilization is taken into account, however, the Army needs to collect consistent data on system utilization and training effectiveness to produce robust estimates of cost effectiveness.