To introduce how the Aviation industry has used game-based learning, we must first identify the variation of game types that can be used in education, such as Educational games, Online Games, Leisure games and for the purposes of aviation, “Simulators”. Simulators are one of the oldest form of “Game” and have been used by military, car manufacturers and more recently by commercial aviation.

“Historical and quasi-historical simulations like Sid Meier’s Gettysburg allow gamers to replay military conflicts under different conditions.” (Freitas, 2006) Users playing these games get a better understanding of how to handle real world scenarios. Evidently, Sid Meier games aren’t only played by military personnel, so it can be played as a leisure game. The Microsoft Flight Simulator series on the other hand is sold to the general game consumer, but it is designed for current or upcoming pilots who would like to simulate real life flight scenarios without having to pay for hours on a real aircraft or a real simulator. The first of the series dated back to 1984 and since then Microsoft has made giant leaps which have lead the company to develop a simulation game that is as close to real as it can get.

Flight Simulator X entered the market in 2006 and had great success. Research shows that training pilots using a simulator allows for, what is known as “Adaptive Training”. “Adaptive training” has come to refer specifically to the automatic adjustment of the difficulty, complexity, or newness of a training task as a function of the individual student’s progress (Williges, 2013). Thus, this forces trainees to advance appropriately with increasing student proficiency. Some question how simulators are useful to pilot training. Simulators are a good bench mark of how a trainee will perform as a future pilot, simulators also reproduce the aerodynamic responses of an aircraft with accurate precision giving trainees close to real experience and lastly simulators are an affordable way for licences pilots to maintain their proficiency. The main reason why I endorse the Flight Simulator is because of the degree of safety it provides pilots to simulate dangerous scenarios within a safe environment. This experience would be invaluable if pilots carrying a commercial airliner, were forced to execute procedures they have practiced in simulators. This degree of expertise gained from simulators shows the effectiveness of such training using merely a video game, pilots can replicate mid-air engine failures, landing gear malfunctions, cabin depressurization and many other life-threatening cases.

Flight Simulator X Commercial