Funny story related to this: A friend of mine's dad is on the LAPD, 33 years and about to retire. He was on injured leave for about a year and at home he played a smackload of area-51 and Time Crisis on his son's nintendo while at home. When he returned to work those games had absolute destroyed his ability to qualify with the actual firearm he hadn't used in a year because he had conditioned himself out of adjusting for real recoil, and firing way, way too fast. He had to swear off light gun games for a good long while to recover.

I can easily see that happening, BitBasher. Those games are not at all realistic (in spite of what the gamers want to believe).

The real trick with firearms training however, is not teaching people how to shoot- that's the easy part. The real trick is teaching people when to shoot:

How to think during a lethal force situation.

How to evaluate situations to determine if lethal force is needed/appropriate.

How to determine when to discontinue using lethal force.

Currently, the best training system I know of is the Firearms Training Simulator (AKA F.A.T.S.) and it's various clones (such as Range 2000).

These systems operate by using a real gun, but the barrel has been removed and replaced with a laser. The system projects a video onto a wall-sized screen which portrays actors in a role-played scenerio. The instructor can control the actors actions, the officer in the simulation has to interact with the actors on-screen. The officer gives orders ("let me see your hands", "drop the gun", "don't move" etc). and the instructor controls how the video reacts. The instructor can alter the scenario to have the suspect comply, or not. If the suspect pulls something out of his pockets (or purse, or whatever) it may be a wallet, or a weapon, or a toy, or something else (the instructor can control this as well).

Each training scenario has numerous outcomes, some of which require the officer to use lethal force and some of which do not.

If lethal force is used, the officer fires the gun and the laser strikes the screen. The system records where the laser strikes the screen and adjusts the scenario accordingly (if you get a lethal hit, the suspect will fall, if you miss, he'll keep attacking you).

The system also records how long you took to react and whether or not you used good judgement in using lethal force.

You can replay the scenario to evaluate your performation, and the system will mark where your shots went.

The system can accomidate multiple officers (police models are usually limited to two, military models may accept more participants) involved in the scenario at the same time.

Some of the more advanced systems can use simulated chemical agents (mace, pepperspray), simulated baton strikes, and simulated flashlights.

The guns do not recoil and the scenario takes place with a view range of maybe 100 degrees (one wall only). Also, the system counts how many shot you've fired, but you never run out of bullets. However it is the closest you can get with current technology.

The system is highly successful in simulating these events and training the officers how to think quickly in lethal force encounters and to correctly evaluate when an encounter requires/justifies the use of lethal force.

The training system is also realistic enough to do a bit of desensatizing. Officer who find themselves in lethal force enounters know how to react. They've been in enough simulated encounters to know how to react. Less emotion is involved, which is good, it means less panic and more thinking.

I have not seen anything to suggest that these training systems have any effect on the officer's ability to deal emtionally with the aftermath of having had to shoot someone. The emotional trauma to officers following a shooting seems to be uneffected.

The military has a newer version that uses blanks so it recoils like it should and does all the nifty things you described. It also can be networked to allow full battle field interaction with multiple squads all the way up through the command including tanks and air support. Also the screen is much larger. not full room yet but about 2/3's of it. They have claimed (the people who make the system) by a certain year (not to far off) they will have it where everything on the battle field can be simulated and to allow soldiers to get as much feed back as possible, it also will critique the officers and the abilities to cammand.

On "Mail Call" they showed the army's training video game and the guns are rigged to really have serious recoil, a mix of blanks and air pressure I think.