I admit I read this a few years back and memory of the exact wording is not certain it may have said short bursts at any rate the tank crew was confidant enough engage the hostiles without concern for hitting the non combatants.
I am pretty sure that they where not standing side by side the towns people where probably 20 or 30 feet away but still it gives you an idea what is possible.The enemy was in plain sight in the center of the town like whack a mole.
Skybird you are also comparing a sim to a real life tank that sim likely does not know the classified bits of information on optics and such that a real tank does know so keep that in mind.The sim could be fairly accurate in certain respects.There are also very likely things that a real tank crew can do that can not be done in that sim.
For example the AH-64 Apache the Hellfire missiles a very skilled crew can actually fire two Hellfires (the laser guided one) at two separate targets in a salvo this takes great skill and some timing but US Army and Royal Flying Corps have done so with success on more than one occasion.This has even been performed by an Apache crew in a case where it was also the laser designation source.
Real life war fighters can do things in combination with their resources that a sim even the kind that they use to train with simply can not simulate.
I hunt and I have seen game animals through optics at such ranges even with my much cruder equipment objects do not look blokish as they do in your screens.the troops look like a squre turd with a hat on

when with human eyes and true high quality optics they would look like a man not a square turd you can not seriously consider your comparison to have any legitimacy when we all know the humans eyes see things better than that.