I've actually received emails from two academic professors/teachers (collegiate level) who used the game in some form/fashion, as a tool within their courses.
If anyone has an educational use-case for SimAirport, I'd love to hear about it. I'd also be willing to consider providing "site" licenses, or figuring out a license that would work for you, for any solid educational use-cases -- feel free to contact me directly, email is on profile. :)
New airport designers are badly needed, seems to me 12-year olds may be better suited to the task than the construction companies contracted currently!
Either you've missed the /s at the end or you know a lot more about some massive recent advances in tunnel drilling and construction compared to the public.
How will the royalty and their army sized entourages get to their climate meetings without airports? You can't transport multi-ton armored vehicles on sailboats.
Should and will are two different things. “You can never visit your family in your homeland again” doesn’t win votes, and is slightly less competitive than “you’ll only ever go on vacation in your local environment.”
I sort of suspect the answer here, as with all things, isn’t command but alternatives. Hydrogen and EV aircraft are nascent. Nuclear air craft exist, and can be built with modern miniature reactors that are entirely safe.
The problem is funding goes more towards killing varied brown people than improving technology.
> The problem is funding goes more towards killing varied brown people than improving technology.
The "war on terror" is mostly wound down now. But the point you're making is not correct; most advanced technology, especially aerospace, emerged from military research grants.
We have more brown people for more reasons to kill than the “war on terror”
I agree a lot of advancements came from the military but what an absurdly inefficient way to achieve that. Most of the military expenditure is on personnel and infrastructure. Military R&D is a pittance, not directly released to civil use, and inefficiently allocated. Even DOE investment is primarily towards war making and nuclear arsenal upgrade, research, and maintenance. The primary DOE fusion research is done as a slight of budget for nuclear war making rather than energy generation. The spin off tech from defense spending is a drop in the bucket of what could have been achieved had that funding been open civil research towards strategic goals like sustainable energy independence.
All this said I’ll grant that the relative global stability imposed by the US on the world has ushered in a period of discovery unrivaled by simply providing a world where global societies weren’t being repaved every 10 year, with the repaving being contained to proxy war zones. This is not without immense value - and almost certainly staved of many very bad scenarios. The trick will be maintaining that stability over the next 50 years. It’s not obvious to me we can sustain that. But what we have had was bought with that defense spending.
This is an amazing educational experience for students but it is also such a great way to crowd source hyper realistic 3D world replicas - it reminds me of the Minecraft replica of MIT that cropped up at the start of COVID. I really hope they open source and preserve all the work of these students on a combined server anyone can browse.
It would be even more amazing if we ended up in a world where we basically open source public infrastructure projects so that anyone could contribute ideas and/or solicit public comment on new concepts before we invest billions of dollars of public money.
It also immediately comes to mind that Microsoft develops MS flight simulator - could proposed airport innovations be paired with it to test how pilots feel about changes to layouts or e.g. how new runways may affect air traffic and other patterns?
> could proposed airport innovations be paired with it to test how pilots feel about changes to layouts or e.g. how new runways may affect air traffic and other patterns?
This is a great idea. You could change the layout in the game and then monitor pilot behavior through e.g. VATSIM to see if it makes operations too confusing or if they can adjust easily. And if hobbyists can figure out, it should be safe for trained professionals to work with.
What’s a good age to show a kid Minecraft? My son is five and loves LEGO and broadly anything construction, I’d be curious to know at what age it might be fun to show him Minecraft.
He’s not bad at playing some simple platformers et al on the PlayStation but for some reason Minecraft feels maybe a year or two off. Curious what folks here think.
My experience: My son is five and a very big fan. He doesn’t really grasp the mechanics, but he enjoys the exploration. We started off on peaceful mode for the first dozen sessions or so, just until he got the hang of it. The. I built a house with a balcony so he can watch me fight monsters, a favorite activity of his.
We’ve been playing for about a month, just an hour or so before bed. He’s starting to get interested in crafting. He loves to smelt, so I built him a dedicated space to grab ore and store the bars.
We play whatever he wants, so sometimes we’re playing Mario Kart or the like. But more often than not, he comes back to Minecraft.
My kids each went through a phase when they started Minecraft where they could build & farm and wanted to play in a world with mobs but wanted me to be their "knight" that kept them safe - it was a lot of fun for a few hours a week. Real good quality time that we still joke about years later.
I don’t let my kids use computers, let alone game consoles. But Minecraft is the one exception. That “game” is extremely intellectually stimulating for creative kids that age.
I set time limits, but no I don't see any addictive behavior. If they ever start acting like that it gets shut down hard and fast, and I make clear playing Minecraft is a privilege. I never play with them, but I often ask them to show me what they built. They play on local worlds, or sometimes with each other, but not on public servers or with friends.
"She can earn her phone or computer when she publishes an app on the App Store."
I don't understand how building a piece of software that Apple is willing to publish on the App Store makes your daughter emotionally prepared for social media.
I don't have any problem with gatekeeping minors' access to social media (although I would be much more liberal in this area than you) but this metric seems absolutely bonkers to me. My heuristic from my own personal development would be that the earlier I was able to make some commercially viable software the later you should push my access to social media... my coding ability was never an indicator of my defenses against the common ills of social media for kids as I understand them!
You are misreading intent. When she is able to productively use computers as computational tools, she can have one. There has to be a positive to balance the negative.
That's interesting because if you set that out as a goal.. then what, right? What you'd like is on-going productive use once unlimited access is granted if your goal is balance. My inclination would be to be giving "homework" all the time, so the hours get split up somehow and aren't just spent of frivolous things once the privileges are acquired.
She uses my computer under my supervision (and tutelage--we're working through a few Swift tutorials right now). She doesn't have her own computer, or unrestricted computer time, outside of her school where they have Chromebooks.
I started playing RuneScape in 2003 (I’m not yet 25) & it was incredibly beneficial to my development, academically at least.
You’re probably more than good to let them play Minecraft in some form, just remember that while what they’re doing will probably look quite foreign to you, it doesn’t mean it’s not intellectually stimulating & beneficial to somebody that young.
I played a lot of RuneScape. I think it was beneficial to my development to a point, but there are diminishing returns and I played it long after I stopped learning from it.
I started my son on Minecraft (and BotW) at 4 years old - early, yes, but mainly because he’s part of the pandemic generation. I know there’s a stigma around video games and kids but (for the right games) I don’t regret it one bit. I’ve seen him develop problem-solving and creative skills in Minecraft, not to mention it’s what kickstarted his interest in reading.
My personal experience is that they pick it up very quickly - a couple of months - and then quickly go on to blow your mind.
Minecraft is so much better than the digicrack that passes for actual “educational” games. The Prodigy products are an abomination, those people should be ashamed of themselves.
Once upon a time there were actual educational games. The Jumpstart series from Knowledge Adventures, The Cluefinders series from The Learning Company, The Magic School Bus games from Scholastic and Microsoft, the Carmen Sandiego games from Broderbund, and more.
And of course, everyone's favorite: The Oregon Trail and subsequent sequels from MECC and later The Learning Company.
It's a shame that market simply isn't viable anymore. Those games played a big role in nurturing my love for computers.
I remember many of those very fondly, thanks for the memories. As far as explicitly educational games go, the Dragonbox apps are often recommended around these parts. I’ve recently downloaded them, although I have yet to try them.
And I also feel like in general the educational value of games like Minecraft, BotW, etc is often undersold - partly out of stigma surrounding the medium as a whole, partly because they’re often teaching skills that are difficult to directly measure.
I have no doubt that when he’s a bit older, things like Cities: Skylines, Factorio, Dyson Sphere Program, Kerbal, Outer Wilds, Rimworld, etc will continue to entertain and educate.
Similar question: is Minecraft still as lego-like as it was back in the beta days with a small-ish number of unit cube blocks, or has it evolved past that into multitudes of specialised blocks and items?
It's definitely the latter, but mostly by aesthetic variation not functionality. For example, the original 1.0 version had 4 types of wood - now the game has 10 types - but they still all work the same way. This expands to anything made out of wood.
My answer is to introduce the option but otherwise leave it be. Have it available to fire up and leave a shortcut on the desktop.
I've honestly never taken to most of the things my parents suggested (or god forbid, forced), it just wasn't fun unless I was the one holding the initiative.
To explain and demonstrate: My love for computers ultimately stems from my mom and dad's computer just sitting on the desk, ripe for piquing my curiosity. I probably would have gone down another path in life if they instead shoved it in my face.
My daughter is five and plays creative by herself on PC. It's easier (for her) to control than the tablet version and she asks to watch Minecraft videos before playing to learn more (she corrected me on the minimum size of a nether portal the other day...)
Not to mention her keyboard and mouse skills are great now.
Probably 4-5 years old. You can run your own private Bedrock server with backups and all. My daughters and I have been building the same creative world for three years now, lots of memorable structures.
a relative of mine was involved in developing the eSIM standards, working with a consortium of telcos and phone manufacturers.
For whatever reason, docs like that one are something he just loves to both read and produce. Diving in deep to a topic, finding every rough edge, corner case, undefined bit of behaviour and getting consensus from involved parties. I think I'd rather bash my head repeatedly against a brick wall, but somehow he finds it a lot of fun.
I'm a Solutions Architect -albeit in software- and I LOVE documentation like that. I will spend days and weeks consuming esoterica on even the most "simple" of specifications (looking at you JSON). I'll spend hours just ruminating after reading a single concept for a protocol. Partly because I enjoy it and partly because it's my job. I need to understand not just how the code works, but the implications and implementations of it. I also need to be able to explain all of it at varying levels of detail in both technical and non-technical terms.
"Procedure design" isn't a job title. Do you mean procedure designer? And how many people in the U.S. work in designing landing and takeoff facilities?
In the UK, the CAA approves procedure design organisations - listed here [0]. There are 8 and several are only a couple of people. Even the large ones probably only have 4 people max actual IFP designers. The total involved in the UK probably does not exceed 25. You could scale US according to the number of IFP airports.
This is awesome, reminds me of First Robotics Lego League. Kids are smart, and meeting them halfway using a UX they already understand is a great way to get them involved!
I loved participating in Lego League growing up. The key is that the building/iteration itself is a form of play, which locks adults out of the conversation and forces technical solutions, often requiring teamwork to overcome. Everyone wants to be the rockstar, but Lego League forced you to develop collaboration skills.
It's a shame most of that magic wears off in the high school level FRC competitions. It's still fun and a great learning experience, but people take it way too seriously. Our team would go up against NASA-sponsored robots or people who borrowed Toyota schematics for their drivetrain. After a certain level, it becomes less about what the kids are capable of and more about who has the most connections/highest funding.
Of course, the fun was never the winning for either program. It's just funny to me that Legos did such a good job of gatekeeping those meddlesome adults, and now Minecraft might do the same.
FRC at HS level has become an important credential for Ivy League admissions, with all the downsides that come with it. It’s incredibly difficult to compete with private schools with almost unlimited funding, bankrolled by b/millionaire parents. As a metric is almost useless now.
I was in Texas and would have to compete against these teams really early. It kind of sucked, we had a pretty good design imho but we just got steamrolled early.
Well, basically I just copied the airport we have now. Then, I added some fins to lower wind resistance. And this racing stripe here I feel is pretty sharp.
This is really awesome, and I think such a great way to engage kds! Epic work, and kudos to the FAA for having the vision to engage in this way. Government is not renowned for it’s creativity.
You just have to be careful about what the games are. I wouldn’t hand them the App Store and say “have fun,” but lots of games are spectacular for young kids.
Hell, hacking video games when I was an early teenager is how I developed an entire career in vuln research and exploit dev, and eventually started and sold a cybersecurity company. Video games literally handed me my career because I had fun breaking them.
You never know where interests will lead. You just want to stay away from “FarmVille” and similar games that make it impossible to do anything but play the game.
Obviously it’s changed a bit from the 90s but I think I wasn’t irreparably harmed from playing say “Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo” as a 5 year old.
I don’t plan on giving my kid unfettered access to the internet but I really enjoyed using computers as a kid and I think it’s a big part of why I ended up being an engineer today.
For my daughter it was around 9 or 10. Games these days are way more addictive than they used to be. I think any younger than that and its hard to reason with kids about what's going on in their heads.
Also had zero tolerance to things like iPads, phones etc in our home. When out at grandparents/friends etc then fine, but never, ever at home or in the car, on a plane, in a restaurant etc. Seeing families sit down at a restaurant and then they just chuck the 4 y/o an iPad for the entire dinner makes me sad.
Start out with retro gaming. Kids have no standards for graphics, so they won't object. Old games are much more focused on clear mechanics, rather than flashy graphics and complex rules. The further back you go, the controls become simpler and easier to grasp for young kids.
flashbacks to the time I wrote up a speculative proposal to win a NASA/FAA SBIR phase 1 grant. related to airport sims (one we hoped was relatively novel, compared to prior efforts.)
my partner and I at the time ultimately decided not to submit. but we (well, mostly me) put a lot of R&D time into it
I've actually received emails from two academic professors/teachers (collegiate level) who used the game in some form/fashion, as a tool within their courses.
If anyone has an educational use-case for SimAirport, I'd love to hear about it. I'd also be willing to consider providing "site" licenses, or figuring out a license that would work for you, for any solid educational use-cases -- feel free to contact me directly, email is on profile. :)