I had a coworker from the democratic republic of Congo who insisted that if he was back home he would do ok fighting because he played lots of first-person shooters. I mean he was 100% serious about this. We argued about it.
He got a commitment from our employer to pay his undergrad tuition. But he disappeared one day, probably went home to fight and die. I search for him every now and then but I think he's gone.
The types of skills from FPS games and real fighting are much further apart than gaming and ATC. A closer analogy would be a coworker who knows Judo is needed for Greco-Roman wrestling. Very different sports with different rules, but the skills in building and navigating a mental map of the environment carry over.
I wonder if that happened to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volodymyr_Yezhov as well, FPS games represent you as a Superman, there's a big gap between games and reality. That being said I want my air traffic controller to be good at cooking mama.
Idk about Yezhov, in Ukraine all men have to go fight so it's not like he made a naive decision at all, it was not his to make in the first place if that makes sense.
I played A LOT of flight controller on my ipod / ipad back in the day, and habour master too, and you need to start from scratch when you have a collision, just like in real life!
I think in both cases that while it's far from an equivalent experience, there are some attributes or skills that can transfer across. Not sure why anyone would be particularly keen to bet their life on just that, though.
> there are some attributes or skills that can transfer across
Even if the attributes and skills transferred 1 to 1 "I'm good at first-person shooters thus I'll be fine in a war" is not a coherent line of reasoning.
If you're an elite level first-person shooter player you maybe have a 2.5 KD... great stats, not exactly great odds to survive any given combat situation when there are no respawns.
The US Army did a bunch of recruiting to teenagers like this, successfully. Work for us, it's just like Call of Duty! They had their own branded FPS even.
It’s just a recruitment campaign. It’s not like they’re putting people straight into a control tower because they like to play Microsoft Flight Simulator or something. They still go through a whole training process.
For anyone contemplating the same, go play paintball for half a day. You don't just get killed every other round like in Arma, the "death" it's somewhat painful, you get out of breath and start valuing any semblance of cover very much (and get killed from and unexpected direction anyway).
That's cool, but sim racing enthusiasts typically have gaming peripherals like steering wheels, pedals, and gear shifters that bring them closer to the experience of a real race car driver. For FPS games, they might be realistic in terms of detail, but how would most video games capture the physical stamina needed to carry around equipment, or maybe even aiming and maintaining the sights, equipment, etc.
This is a government that employed a freelance billionaire to cull massive numbers of government staff on quasi-bigoted moral vibes, gutting critical services like food safety regulators (and then tired to re-hire, etc etc), and are now seeing massive widespread outbreaks of exactly the kinds of diseases those exact people were there to prevent.
It wasn't long back before they fired a bunch of ATC staff and in the very same week saw multiple fatal aircraft crashes.
Forgive me for thinking this administration are only capable of making absurd decisions, particularly in a story like this.
Have played competitive fps games with a couple of ATC dudes for almost half of my life now.
They're all very sensible, level headed people who get justifiably upset when you do not do the procedurally and objectively correct (lowest risk, highest percentage) thing to win in a given situation and will calmly spell it all out every single time.
ATCs are chronically understaffed in a way that endangers all of us, and the FAA has been under scrutiny for their hiring practices for over a decade https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39184451
It's equally plausible to me that this is an example of "we need to try something and this is something" or just deflection from the prior criticism.
According to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, people typically play video games about controlling traffic in the air? Or the quote was just completely butchered to be something completely else than what was said:
> "A lot of what they do playing games ... is what they do ... controlling traffic in the air," Duffy told CBS News
It shouldn't really matter. If you have the proclivity to sit on your bum for hours monitoring many parameters at a time and making decisions you're a much better fit to be trained up for ATC than someone picked at random.
From a very naïve perspective, why isn’t air traffic control a solved problem?
Would love to be educated here, but it seems like there are just not that many moving pieces per airport (<10,000) and all of them are tagged with transponders, etc. And a human in the loop with respect to coordination might be the biggest source of risk.
This all seems like queuing theory and collision avoidance, which are very well done by computers.
I'd suggest looking at Admiral Cloudberg's recent analysis of the Jan. 2025 airliner/military helicopter collision in Washington DC. It's a study in the difficulties of air traffic control in the 21st century and the reality of transponder usage, complicated by an overwhelmed airport and legislative indifference. Transponders aren't universally used, technology and people aren't perfect.
This one is long; I suggest reading the first chapter, then skipping to chapter 7 for the important parts of the story.
Weather conditions, ground/runway conditions, obstructions, mechanical issues. There are tons of edge cases with huge consequences for error. Same reason self driving is not a solved problem, but with dramatically less tolerance for error.
But it feels like planes have a huge advantage in that they all have trackers constantly broadcasting their location to one another. Almost like they are working as a team compared to FSD systems which are limited to a small range of self collected info from vision/lidar.
Not that it can ever be fully automated but it seems like much easier problem to solve.
Doesn’t meaningfully change the answer. There are still tons of edge cases with catastrophic failure modes. The transponder won’t tell you about the alligator on the runway, a vehicle where it shouldn’t be, unexpected braking action, a mechanical problem, or a plane not doing what it was cleared to do. Tracking the planes is the easy part.
The reasons we haven't automated air traffic control are similar to the reasons why we still have pilots in the cockpit even though we technically don't need to some of the time.
It's not only a dangerous assumption, it's simply incorrect. Transponders on aircraft are not required in most of the US, including around Class D towered airports unless operating within a designated Mode C veil or at/above 10,000 feet MSL.
I don't know why hiring gamers for ATC would be any different than hiring anyone else to do it. There's extensive training required, and I don't think it's something you can get a college degree for anyway. Maybe there's some advantage for gamers, but I don't see where it would be all that important.
When I got interested in flying I took to flight simulators and the VATSIM network[0], as I had seen mentioned multiple times that the radio work can be a difficult aspect of flying to pick up on when flying out of a towered/busy field. By the time I started, I was comfortable on the radio and pre-flight checks, and this seemed to gained quite a bit of favor from my CFI.
I'm not saying it made me a well-versed pilot, but simulating these situations can do a lot to get one going.
I got my PPL a few years ago. VATSIM and flight sim were huge tools.
I would, literally, fly my training flights a few times using full VATSIM and then show up IRL to do the same thing. It made a massive difference.
My instructor even said it makes his job so much easier. He had to do nothing with me.
I was able to cut my rental time over half. It paid for itself a dozen times over. Like literally it saved me $5k or so.
I recently gifted my yoke and controls to my GF who is getting her commerical cert. She is so excited. She is already flying her training flights using it. It's so helpful.
I think the headline should have emphasized that they were hired as trainees.
I am not a fan of the Trump admin but Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, is one of the few people in it that I think steers clear of politics and prioritizes doing a good job. A horrible air traffic disaster that occurred a couple of weeks into the new administration threw him into the spotlight while he was still getting settled in, and it seems like he took the lesson to heart.
I actually think gamers are a good population to recruit from because you do want people that internalize cognitive abstractions, maintain focus for long periods, juggle competing priorities etc. But one can also imagine some less attractive gamer stereotypes like poor emotional containment or cognitive saturation leading to a rage quit. It will be interesting to see what the attrition rate will be like for this cohort vs others.
It's still the Trump administration. I mean relative to the general (absurdly low) standard thereof. I'm trying to be charitable because I can easily picture someone 10x worse.
> Historically, fewer than 10% of applicants met the FAA's requirements to work as an air traffic controller and gain admission to the agency's training program.
It sounds like they are weeded out before even being accepted.
The medical certificate weeds out many of them. Many video gamers are proud of their ADHD, and that is a no-no. If they've been depressed, have sleep disorders, etc. They would have to go through a difficult process to be issued a certificate if they eventually are able to. I doubt a casual, "sure, I could try it", applicant would spend the $6000+ to get the medical in that situation.
Individuals must meet the following minimum qualifications in order to be eligible for an Air Traffic Controller position:
Be a United States citizen
Be under the age of 31
Pass a medical examination
Pass a security investigation
Pass the FAA air traffic pre-employment tests, including the Air Traffic Controller Specialists Skills Assessment Battery (ATSA)
Speak English clearly enough to be understood over communications equipment
Have one year of progressively responsible work experience, or a Bachelor's degree, or a combination of post-secondary education and work experience that totals one year
The medical requirements are furthermore:
Air Traffic Controller candidates must have the capacity to perform the essential functions of these positions without risk to themselves or others. Candidates must be physically and mentally fit and meet standards for vision, hearing, cardiovascular, neurological and psychiatric health.
(and there's a long list on the site for the specifics for each standard)... for example, the first one under eye:
Applicants must demonstrate distant and near vision of 20/20 or better in each eye separately. The use of bifocal contact lenses for the correction of near vision is unacceptable.
...
It goes on for the training requirements...
Entry-level applicants must complete required training courses and spend several months at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City. Applicants are paid while in training. After graduating the academy, individuals are placed in locations across the country and must gain 2-3 years additional training, both classroom and on-the-job experience, before becoming a certified professional controller. This rigorous training includes close supervision and evaluation by senior controllers that ensures controllers are competent, professional, know their airspace environment and can deal with the pressures and high pace of the job.
Why are they saying “video gamers” as if it is a job title? Qualification for ATC is to be under 31 and the job is male dominated. No shit everyone they hire plays video games.
While their normal demographic might happen to contain a lot of gamers, the article is talking specifically about the results of a recruitment campaign that targeted gamers
Idiotic headline. This is a trainee pipeline. The headline is meant to mislead you into thinking they hired some people based on video games and they are now air traffic controllers.
I blame the readers. It shouldn’t be that hard to think about it for two seconds and conclude they’re probably not just plopping gamers in front of a radar screen. But apparently that’s too much to ask.
I had a coworker from the democratic republic of Congo who insisted that if he was back home he would do ok fighting because he played lots of first-person shooters. I mean he was 100% serious about this. We argued about it.
He got a commitment from our employer to pay his undergrad tuition. But he disappeared one day, probably went home to fight and die. I search for him every now and then but I think he's gone.
I think his naïveté is equal to this policy.
The types of skills from FPS games and real fighting are much further apart than gaming and ATC. A closer analogy would be a coworker who knows Judo is needed for Greco-Roman wrestling. Very different sports with different rules, but the skills in building and navigating a mental map of the environment carry over.
I wonder if that happened to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volodymyr_Yezhov as well, FPS games represent you as a Superman, there's a big gap between games and reality. That being said I want my air traffic controller to be good at cooking mama.
Idk about Yezhov, in Ukraine all men have to go fight so it's not like he made a naive decision at all, it was not his to make in the first place if that makes sense.
The planes will just respawn after disappearing from the radar, right?
I played A LOT of flight controller on my ipod / ipad back in the day, and habour master too, and you need to start from scratch when you have a collision, just like in real life!
Reminds me of this. Probably dead now.
https://old.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/1gcp7mt...
I think in both cases that while it's far from an equivalent experience, there are some attributes or skills that can transfer across. Not sure why anyone would be particularly keen to bet their life on just that, though.
> there are some attributes or skills that can transfer across
Even if the attributes and skills transferred 1 to 1 "I'm good at first-person shooters thus I'll be fine in a war" is not a coherent line of reasoning.
If you're an elite level first-person shooter player you maybe have a 2.5 KD... great stats, not exactly great odds to survive any given combat situation when there are no respawns.
The US Army did a bunch of recruiting to teenagers like this, successfully. Work for us, it's just like Call of Duty! They had their own branded FPS even.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Army ?
I played this game! It was a buggy mess and really unintuitive compared to battlefield.
It’s just a recruitment campaign. It’s not like they’re putting people straight into a control tower because they like to play Microsoft Flight Simulator or something. They still go through a whole training process.
For anyone contemplating the same, go play paintball for half a day. You don't just get killed every other round like in Arma, the "death" it's somewhat painful, you get out of breath and start valuing any semblance of cover very much (and get killed from and unexpected direction anyway).
https://futurism.com/sim-racing-virtual-motorsport-beat-form...
That's cool, but sim racing enthusiasts typically have gaming peripherals like steering wheels, pedals, and gear shifters that bring them closer to the experience of a real race car driver. For FPS games, they might be realistic in terms of detail, but how would most video games capture the physical stamina needed to carry around equipment, or maybe even aiming and maintaining the sights, equipment, etc.
The idea of FPS games giving you some sense of real combat is, of course, absurd.
The idea of games/communities like MFS and VATSIM providing some sense of real ATC is much less absurd.
This is a government that employed a freelance billionaire to cull massive numbers of government staff on quasi-bigoted moral vibes, gutting critical services like food safety regulators (and then tired to re-hire, etc etc), and are now seeing massive widespread outbreaks of exactly the kinds of diseases those exact people were there to prevent.
It wasn't long back before they fired a bunch of ATC staff and in the very same week saw multiple fatal aircraft crashes.
Forgive me for thinking this administration are only capable of making absurd decisions, particularly in a story like this.
There is a ATC game from Japan: BOKUKAN (I am an Air Traffic Controller):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Traffic_Controller_(series...
Have played competitive fps games with a couple of ATC dudes for almost half of my life now.
They're all very sensible, level headed people who get justifiably upset when you do not do the procedurally and objectively correct (lowest risk, highest percentage) thing to win in a given situation and will calmly spell it all out every single time.
ATCs are chronically understaffed in a way that endangers all of us, and the FAA has been under scrutiny for their hiring practices for over a decade https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39184451
It's equally plausible to me that this is an example of "we need to try something and this is something" or just deflection from the prior criticism.
As trying things go, it doesn’t seem that crazy of an idea. I imagine air traffic control would even make for a pretty fun video game.
No mention of what games they're playing?
Also no mention of when the NYC ones were told to move to Pennsylvania or be fired? Interestingly also cbs's article https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/new-york-philadelphia-a...
Not sure - but I know there's a really serious community of folks who do ATC virtually on VATSIM: https://vatsim.net
I feel like those folks would already have been candidates for air traffic controller jobs though.
Probably this:
https://airport.apunen.com/
GTA 5 online, probably.
Angry Birds, of course
My wife is an Angry Bird 8)
Logging on to news dot ycombinator dot com for some Borat posting
> No mention of what games they're playing?
According to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, people typically play video games about controlling traffic in the air? Or the quote was just completely butchered to be something completely else than what was said:
> "A lot of what they do playing games ... is what they do ... controlling traffic in the air," Duffy told CBS News
Presumably they meant staring at a screen for hours on end while talking through a headset.
https://www.openscope.co/
It shouldn't really matter. If you have the proclivity to sit on your bum for hours monitoring many parameters at a time and making decisions you're a much better fit to be trained up for ATC than someone picked at random.
From a very naïve perspective, why isn’t air traffic control a solved problem?
Would love to be educated here, but it seems like there are just not that many moving pieces per airport (<10,000) and all of them are tagged with transponders, etc. And a human in the loop with respect to coordination might be the biggest source of risk.
This all seems like queuing theory and collision avoidance, which are very well done by computers.
I'd suggest looking at Admiral Cloudberg's recent analysis of the Jan. 2025 airliner/military helicopter collision in Washington DC. It's a study in the difficulties of air traffic control in the 21st century and the reality of transponder usage, complicated by an overwhelmed airport and legislative indifference. Transponders aren't universally used, technology and people aren't perfect.
This one is long; I suggest reading the first chapter, then skipping to chapter 7 for the important parts of the story.
https://medium.com/@admiralcloudberg/reaping-the-whirlwind-i...
Weather conditions, ground/runway conditions, obstructions, mechanical issues. There are tons of edge cases with huge consequences for error. Same reason self driving is not a solved problem, but with dramatically less tolerance for error.
But it feels like planes have a huge advantage in that they all have trackers constantly broadcasting their location to one another. Almost like they are working as a team compared to FSD systems which are limited to a small range of self collected info from vision/lidar.
Not that it can ever be fully automated but it seems like much easier problem to solve.
Doesn’t meaningfully change the answer. There are still tons of edge cases with catastrophic failure modes. The transponder won’t tell you about the alligator on the runway, a vehicle where it shouldn’t be, unexpected braking action, a mechanical problem, or a plane not doing what it was cleared to do. Tracking the planes is the easy part.
The reasons we haven't automated air traffic control are similar to the reasons why we still have pilots in the cockpit even though we technically don't need to some of the time.
"all of them are tagged with transponders" seems like a very dangerous assumption to base a system on.
It's not only a dangerous assumption, it's simply incorrect. Transponders on aircraft are not required in most of the US, including around Class D towered airports unless operating within a designated Mode C veil or at/above 10,000 feet MSL.
I remember in the 1980s, when there was an attempt to rewrite the US air traffic control system in Ada. A friend of mine, was on that project.
It did not end well.
It's a very hairy problem, and mistakes are very costly.
On another note: Those video gamers are gonna have some pretty clunky video experiences.
The collision in LGA in March revealed to me that not all objects are tracked.
But wouldn't that be a case where regardless of human or machine, the outcome wouldn't change since there was no tracking information?
Unions?
I don't know why hiring gamers for ATC would be any different than hiring anyone else to do it. There's extensive training required, and I don't think it's something you can get a college degree for anyway. Maybe there's some advantage for gamers, but I don't see where it would be all that important.
When I got interested in flying I took to flight simulators and the VATSIM network[0], as I had seen mentioned multiple times that the radio work can be a difficult aspect of flying to pick up on when flying out of a towered/busy field. By the time I started, I was comfortable on the radio and pre-flight checks, and this seemed to gained quite a bit of favor from my CFI.
I'm not saying it made me a well-versed pilot, but simulating these situations can do a lot to get one going.
[0] https://vatsim.net/
I got my PPL a few years ago. VATSIM and flight sim were huge tools.
I would, literally, fly my training flights a few times using full VATSIM and then show up IRL to do the same thing. It made a massive difference.
My instructor even said it makes his job so much easier. He had to do nothing with me.
I was able to cut my rental time over half. It paid for itself a dozen times over. Like literally it saved me $5k or so.
I recently gifted my yoke and controls to my GF who is getting her commerical cert. She is so excited. She is already flying her training flights using it. It's so helpful.
Some interesting takes on Reddit Aviation
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1vlnlq9/faa_hires...
seems like the beaten to death shit jokes like all reddit posts
The write by your shell through the redirect won't get those elevated privileges. You need to use something like tee:
If this is a glass house joke well done.
Reddit is way worse. At least we pretend to be here for tech discussions, even if we can’t help but get baited by politics most of the time.
This is honestly the command I ran
> This is honestly the command I ran
Mmm. Unless your /etc/hosts is wide open or your shell is running as root, you got something like
because the way to do what you intended is to sudo 'tee' or something similar in function. AFAIK, you can't 'sudo' shell redirection.Yeah I actually ran it as root without the sudo then edited in the sudo, other comment with tee was correct
What could possibly go wrong?
https://youtube.com/shorts/OT7yVBF1EOQ?si=TkLfjrvpsdIyBm7X
This probably explains why I saw the Ghost from Pacman trying to eat my plane when I was making that ILS approach for runway 32 Right.
I think the headline should have emphasized that they were hired as trainees.
I am not a fan of the Trump admin but Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, is one of the few people in it that I think steers clear of politics and prioritizes doing a good job. A horrible air traffic disaster that occurred a couple of weeks into the new administration threw him into the spotlight while he was still getting settled in, and it seems like he took the lesson to heart.
I actually think gamers are a good population to recruit from because you do want people that internalize cognitive abstractions, maintain focus for long periods, juggle competing priorities etc. But one can also imagine some less attractive gamer stereotypes like poor emotional containment or cognitive saturation leading to a rage quit. It will be interesting to see what the attrition rate will be like for this cohort vs others.
Sean "DEI Bike Lanes" Duffy?
It's still the Trump administration. I mean relative to the general (absurdly low) standard thereof. I'm trying to be charitable because I can easily picture someone 10x worse.
Sean Duffy? Steers clear of politics?
Just like the old rumors of Missile Command players being recruited for NORAD etc.
Really, there are people that play ATC games for fun.
Are they focusing on RTS players with high APM?
They tried, but the max hiring age is still 31.
Only 10% make it through the first week? At least the weed out process is quick.
Where do you see it taking a week?
> Historically, fewer than 10% of applicants met the FAA's requirements to work as an air traffic controller and gain admission to the agency's training program.
It sounds like they are weeded out before even being accepted.
The medical certificate weeds out many of them. Many video gamers are proud of their ADHD, and that is a no-no. If they've been depressed, have sleep disorders, etc. They would have to go through a difficult process to be issued a certificate if they eventually are able to. I doubt a casual, "sure, I could try it", applicant would spend the $6000+ to get the medical in that situation.
As noted in a sibling comment, that there is no "in a week" implied in the 10%.
The requirements themselves are at https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications
The medical requirements are furthermore: (and there's a long list on the site for the specifics for each standard)... for example, the first one under eye: ...It goes on for the training requirements...
And the specifics for that can be found at https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/FAA_Order_JO... with is a 285 page pdf.Why are they saying “video gamers” as if it is a job title? Qualification for ATC is to be under 31 and the job is male dominated. No shit everyone they hire plays video games.
While their normal demographic might happen to contain a lot of gamers, the article is talking specifically about the results of a recruitment campaign that targeted gamers
Idiotic headline. This is a trainee pipeline. The headline is meant to mislead you into thinking they hired some people based on video games and they are now air traffic controllers.
I blame the readers. It shouldn’t be that hard to think about it for two seconds and conclude they’re probably not just plopping gamers in front of a radar screen. But apparently that’s too much to ask.