TAMPA, Florida — This being my first time in a machine gunner’s turret, I’m curious about my rules of engagement. Jermaine Nelson, a former Navy petty officer, is quick to oblige: “Kill ‘em all.”

Not that I have any idea how. Nelson sees my basic confusion with the Dillon M-134 Gatling gun that I’m supposed to be wielding. I’ve been lucky enough in the past to be protected by gunners while riding around in Humvees during embeds in Iraq and Afghanistan. The extent of my interaction with their work has been to pass them bottled water, make dirty jokes and stay out of their way. Nelson flips the switches on the gun to go weapons-hot and tells me that my thumbs need to press the firing buttons simultaneously to let off the 7.62mm rounds. I need to be told that.

It’s time to kill some pixelized insurgents.

The 2011 version of the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference doesn’t lack for simulators. Truth be told, the one I’m in, manufactured by Orlando’s Cubic Simulations, doesn’t have the shock value of the one across the convention floor: Raytheon and Motion Reality’s virtual model of Osama bin Laden’s compound. But that simulator isn’t open to amateurs like me. Maybe it’s the contact high I’m getting from the enthusiasm of commandos swaggering through the exhibitions, because their brothers in the Navy SEALs just wrote a new chapter in special-ops lore by killing bin Laden, but I want to get a (virtual) sense of what the professionals put themselves through.

Ah, hubris.

For one thing, this simulation ain’t exactly realistic. Special-operations raids in Afghanistan may have gone brutally wrong on occasion, but Nelson’s encouraging me to shoot absolutely everything in sight. As the giant video screen around me lurches us down an Afghan road — a rough approximation; this road is paved — innocuous looking Afghan men, boys and vehicles pop up. I am to kill them all. If I wait to discern who they are, they’ll eventually pull out a digitized AK-47 and kill me.

And they very well could. Confession time: I’m a terrible gamer. Never got into first-person shooters. And of course I’ve never manned a Gatling gun. Does this thing have sights? Should I be pressing my back into the rotating turret so I get a wider field of vision? Think: I’ve seen gunners do that, right?

Untrained instinct takes over. The Afghans emerge onto the screen. I squeeze the buttons. The red dot that paints the virtual sky shows me I’m nowhere near my target. So I adjust my style: Keep the buttons pressed and mow down everything in sight. Afghans writhe in pain and collapse into a red pixelized heap. I light up the engine block of an oncoming Toyota Corolla. I’m no commando. I might be a virtual war criminal.

I make a grand total of one cool move. Swinging the turret around to 9 o’clock, I come upon an insurgent gang behind a clay wall attempting to ambush my vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade. They die a fighter’s death. Their families shall tell tales of this day. “Kick ass!” Nelson encourages me.

Actual professionals play Cubic’s simulation. Louis Barnes, the program manager, says the 5th Special Forces Group, one of the most storied special-ops units of all, have the simulator in use. A retired senior noncommissioned officer himself, Barnes served in both Iraq wars, and that makes him proud of the simulation. “I want to make sure I’m working for a company that helps military personnel sustain their lives on the battlefield and make sure they’re better prepared,” he says.

Since that doesn’t describe me, I have better luck over at the Vuzix booth. The Rochester, New York, eyewear company has a $1.2 million contract with the Pentagon’s blue-sky researchers at Darpa to project data-filled holograms onto the eyewear of troops calling in drone strikes.

And it partnered with a former Joint Special Operations Command operative to put video from drones onto commandos’ field monocles. Now it’s approaching the next logical step: beaming data from drones and spy planes onto someone’s Oakleys.

Yes, Oakleys. The idea is that a commando will have 3-D holograms of data relevant to a secret operation show up inconspicuously on his wraparound shades. “You’re not actively doing something. It’s a passive system,” says Vuzix’s Clark Dever. “That’s the cool part.” The company believes it’s two years away, at most, from making spy shades.

Vuzix doesn’t let me take pictures of the prototype it took to the show. But Dever does let me try it out. When I raise an enhanced lens to my left eye, I view a stereoscopic hologram of a short demo video the company produced.

A baseball player who looks like the Phillies’ Placido Polanco takes some swings. A basketball player dribbles down an imaginary court. A woman in hotpants and severe leather boots dances for no one in particular. On the company laptop, it looks like this:

My experience with holograms is limited to Leia’s desperate plea to Obi-wan, so I’m jarred by how transparent the video is.

While I watch the demo through the lens, Vuzix’s James Donnelly hobnobs with other exhibitors. My peripheral vision is unaffected. (A trackball on a remote mouse — easily stashed in your pocket — will control the opacity of the image.) It’s easy to imagine reading data through a pair of sunglasses while absorbing all other visual information. I feel like the Terminator.

But Vuzix’s holograms are pint-size. Lockheed Martin’s are gargantuan. Over at the defense giant’s kiosk, there are twin projector screens, each 6 feet high and 8 feet across, fit for a film buff’s home-entertainment center. This is the Holowall.

The Holowall is something between a simulation module and a teleconferencing tool. Lockheed spokeswoman Dana Casey explains that the projector can help operators with “distributed mission planning.” When I stand in front of its cameras, my image is projected onto the opposite screen — potentially thousands of miles away — while a model of an area my “squad” might need to examine appears below me. If I put on a pair of 3-D glasses, the hologram comes right at me, allowing me to point at, say, the street one team will travel down to liaise with another that’s taking a different thoroughfare.

Lockheed’s Hien Pham loads a replica of a war-torn Afghan “village” while Casey and her colleague, Laura Quintana Cruz, stand on the screen opposite me. Here’s what I see:

Using a Wii controller, Pham scrolls through the different settings until he loads “Khalid,” an ersatz villager in a turban with whom we can practice how to interact with the locals during our mission.

Quintana Cruz picks up a gaming headset and starts a conversation. “How are you?” Khalid asks, in perfect English. “I am fine.”

Then she tries to stump the poor guy.

“Eat a giraffe,” Quintana Cruz commands.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” says Khalid, confused by her Western ways.

I start to get impatient with the pace of his responses. If this were the Cubic simulator, Khalid, who’s clearly just trying to help, would be a dead man. I take a deep breath and continue listening to Quintana Cruz jawing with the CGI projection. Maybe some of that commando discipline is starting to rub off on me.

Photos: Spencer Ackerman/Wired.com

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