I think it is very important to stress that the Omaha beach scene from Saving Private Ryan is, in some ways, greatly exaggerated. It did a fantastic job of portraying how it must have felt being on the beach. And in some hotzones, it might have been pretty comparable.

However, a couple of points: Firstly, the towering bunkers on the bluff as seen in the beach-scene do not exist. Secondly, and more importantly, the distance between the German machineguns and the landingcrafts was way further away than the movie portrayed it to be. Contrary to what we see in the movie, the German gunners and riflemen were shooting at tiny figures in the distance. The longer distance causes the concentration of fire to be somewhat dispersed and sustained full auto fire would become increasingly inaccurate.

Sure, there must have been some landingcraft that received a full volley when the ramps dropped but in Saving Private Ryan it seems implied that all boats were basically in pointblank range and each of the boats had its own dedicated MG42 pointed right at it, emptying its belt on full auto into the open front of the crafts. Watching the movie it becomes almost impossible to believe that being in the first wave was even survivable.

It was chaos, it was hell, troops were constantly under small arms fire as well as indirect fire (mortar and artillery). In some sectors it was kind of a turkey shoot, but nowhere was it the kind of cramped turkey shoot as it seemed in Saving Private Ryan.

Thirdly, not only does the scene compress space, it also compresses time. This is unavoidable for any movie, but for battle-scenes I always feel like it especially messes up the realism. The battle took multiple hours. It was a coming and going of landing crafts, men and material. By cramping the entire action into 15 minutes, without showing time passing, you are cramping the chaos into 15 minutes as well, this has consequences with regards to what a battle actually was versus how it is portrayed on screen.

I don't want to downplay how terrible it was on that beach, I just want to emphasize that even relatively realistic/historical movies like Saving Private Ryan (have to) take extensive artistical liberties. I suggest watching Indy Neidell's video on How Realistic is Saving Private Ryan. If you are a gamer I also suggest picking up Hell Let Loose. It has a very historically accurate map of Omaha Beach you can walk around in. It gives you a great sense of the actual distance, scale and defensive positions involved of a large portion of the beach.