There are various reasons to enjoy this but not actually become ATC:
- its fairly common that people don’t want to ruin their hobby by making it their job
- ATC requirements are pretty strict for application
- US ATC is high stress and stagnant pay, and that combination means there is an ATC shortage which means that the employed ATCs are being worked very hard
https://www.vatsim.net - totally free with regional chapters all over the world. Have their own certification system for pilots and ATC.
Both of these work for multiple different flight simulators and not just MS FS. They work through an in game plugin that connects to their servers. Both take things pretty seriously.
Many do it to get practice speaking English, which makes it mostly a win-win as players get to have controllers who take the game seriously and the controllers get to hone their language skills. It's only a problem if someone's accent is very heavy or they haven't achieved enough English skills yet to be able to communicate the basics of ATC but neither happens very often.
Sometimes I can tell where my ESL coworkers learned English based on phrasing and idioms. It would be interesting to come across someone who honed English skills with such a domain-specific application.
There was a pretty interesting cluster of threads here on HN a while ago about English in business environments with lots of anecdotes about learning English in various "non-English" societies.
I picked up a lot of conversational english because the TV Show Friends was on pretty much during the entire afternoon when I was a teenager and I would spend most of my time after school watching it.
Since I spent a lot of time in english-speaking professional environments for the last few years I managed to deviate a little bit from "Friends style" speak but I still end up saying "like" often if I start rambling.
A lot of people I know also have a bit of a vice with the word "like" and picked it up from Friends as well, it's an interesting thing to notice.
Anyone can get involved in just about anything on the internet
Some of those people are misguided or unstable or actively malicious
Chaos ensues in all its various forms
We humans are just an interesting bunch. With a technology that gives everyone access and a voice, we get to see the whole range of human behavior.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 73.9 ms ] threadit's kinda fascinating such a community exists
There are various reasons to enjoy this but not actually become ATC:
- its fairly common that people don’t want to ruin their hobby by making it their job
- ATC requirements are pretty strict for application
- US ATC is high stress and stagnant pay, and that combination means there is an ATC shortage which means that the employed ATCs are being worked very hard
https://www.pilotedge.net - paid service, used by student pilots
https://www.vatsim.net - totally free with regional chapters all over the world. Have their own certification system for pilots and ATC.
Both of these work for multiple different flight simulators and not just MS FS. They work through an in game plugin that connects to their servers. Both take things pretty seriously.
There was a pretty interesting cluster of threads here on HN a while ago about English in business environments with lots of anecdotes about learning English in various "non-English" societies.
Since I spent a lot of time in english-speaking professional environments for the last few years I managed to deviate a little bit from "Friends style" speak but I still end up saying "like" often if I start rambling.
A lot of people I know also have a bit of a vice with the word "like" and picked it up from Friends as well, it's an interesting thing to notice.
He honned in the Ricky pretty well I thought it was a gag but no its how he learned.
Unfortunately bristling with power-hungry fantasies in my experience.
I've only known one mod of a discord that i actually liked, and I don't think he knew that he had mod privileges quite frankly.