| Summary: | Digital environments that simulate operating environments have often been used by practitioners to develop complex skill sets. Simulation training not only enables them to become proficient in the various actions, movements and procedures but also allows familiarity with a range of different scenarios and contexts. Such training is thus often viewed as an inexpensive, safe and effective alternative, which can allow what was learnt to be transferred and applied to ‘real world’ situations. This paper examines the simulation experiences of soldiers learning to become tank operators. We analyse how, through repetitive interactions with these digital environments, tank operators have learned various habits that shape their actions and motor skills, but also their habituated bodies to think, react and behave in relation to the given combat situations. Through interviews with tank operators from a modern military and from observations of their simulation training, we point out the limits of a phenomenological approach by showing how the virtual, in the Deleuzian sense of that term, forms the necessary backdrop for the acquisition of skilful habits. Thus, this paper establishes that there is an inherent connection between learning and habits that goes beyond representation. Through the Deleuzian understanding of the virtual and its relation to a Ravaissonian understanding of habit, we argue that learning and the gaining of habits are necessarily experimental processes that would produce infinite permutations within our various interactions. This will not only allow us to productively engage with the virtual but also facilitate us to mobilise learning to go beyond the limits placed by representation in all of our interactions.
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