And it all started from original flight and train Simulators. At least with those simulators you can get various plugins to really expand the environment and gameplay.
Driving a train usually needs an engineering degree in real life, it's about managing the momentum of a thousand ton vehicle up and down hills.
Reversing a truck with a trailer takes a ton of practice.
Flying aircraft, especially over long distances requires a lot of knowledge and skills in aviation and navigation.
Farming simulator may sound mundane, but it's about driving heavy vehicles, managing economy and getting to understand farming.
There's a lot more to these games than meets the eye. I've thoroughly enjoyed all of them. There's no way I'll ever be a train engineer, a pilot or a farmer but I get a glimpse into what the job is like in an entertaining gaming session.
I'm dubious of this claim, but am happy to be proven wrong. I don't really see how an engineering degree would be necessary, or even helpful at all for this; I quite agree that it definitely requires a lot of skill, but an engineering degree is an academic qualification which is really an assessment of intellect as opposed to trained skill.
Building on that last claim, I would say that a significant minority, if not a small majority, of professional engineering jobs (in the traditional sense, and excluding train drivers) do not actually require a degree in practice, instead requiring only a certain aptitude and the ability to skill up as necessary for the specific job.
Back in steam engine days the job was more difficult, and needed higher education than today.
And train simulators reflect this, operating a steam locomotive is really difficult. Although the diesel electrics are hard, steam locos are a whole different game. I still haven't been able to complete a route without running into trouble with pressure, water levels, fire mass or fuel.
Train sims are fun, challenging and entertaining. If you're into slower paced and more strategic gaming, give one of the train sims a go.
A full-on engineering degree is wasted for operating trains these days. Much of the manual aspect of old locomotives is automated and you're not expected to maintain the thing.
It’s a good blue collar job that pays well because the schedule really sucks and it’s hard to plan your life. A few friends do this and it has some really shitty rules... you’re on call for a week or more, and can be called to do a 12 hour run a couple of hours before you’re supposed to be off... and you’re often unsure of exactly when you’ll get back.
You basically need to have a spouse who doesn’t work to make it work.
Imagine if your target was any of the many political / prominent figures killed in air “accidents” and your job is to, as mechanic, be able to sabotage the plane in such a way that routine checks by others is not found.
Make it a multi player game, where youre randomly assigned role of checker vs sabotuer.
I'm guessing you've seen / are referring to TIS-100? http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/
Look at the jobs that people like to simulate: pilot, driver, farmer, heavy machinery operator, emergency responder (police/fireman), etc. What do these jobs all have in common? They're jobs where you can do something, usually with your hands, and immediately see what you did impact the world. That direct connection to outcomes is the opposite of the weird futility that permeates the bullshit job. Getting back to it is what the simulator player is really after, the truck or tractor or whatever is just set dressing.
(For bonus points, consider the jobs that are popular to simulate in the context of Marx's theory of alienation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation)
But even those examples are blatantly obvious to anyone who actually works with a receptionist or secretary. Other examples are less so, but effective organizations try to do a good job of showing people how their work fits into the bigger picture. If you're on an assembly line all day drilling three holes into a sheet of steel, by default you're going to feel alienated. The solution to that is to say, no, you're not just drilling three holes into a sheet of steel, you're helping to build a car. And if you do your job well, you're going to build the best cars in the world. And if you have ideas about how to improve the part of the manufacturing process that you're personally involved in, we will continuously improve the process based on your feedback. And so on and so forth. Alienation happens, but it doesn't have to, and when it does happen, it usually either leads to or coincides with poor results. Those solutions I mentioned didn't come from academics or revolutionaries; they came from engineers and industrialists.
Pointless jobs do exist, but most of these jobs exist for reasons like "it's hard to efficiently coordinate large organizations", "sometimes game theory leads to shitty outcomes", and "some people are either con artists or cranks".
I started to think about how hard it would be to create a docuseries about any of the positions prevalent among HN people. "We need to refactor this codbase, ASAP!" is not really worthy of dramatic cuts and voiceovers.
I like my work, but it is kind of baffling how most of my day is spent manipulating "imaginary" things. So many levels of abstraction between what I do and the final (and only) physical result: The change of light emission on someones piece of glass somewhere.
(And of course changed charges in some memory module somewhere, but that's quite hard to observe for the casual viewer)
I think another issue is specialization. If you don't actually have a ton of background knowledge about software in general, and your particular software requirements in particular, the things that people that you and I worry about all day aren't really meaningful. Like, if you watch Star Trek, you don't actually know what the technobabble means (because it doesn't mean anything), and the only reason you care in the first place is because the end result is whether or not the ship blows up. Software engineering is like that except without a ship blowing up. Likewise, medical and courtroom dramas are far more interesting than the real life of a doctor or a lawyer because they spend most of their time immersed in the arcane.
Which is kind of what simulators like this help with. You're not going to understand how to drive a train or maintain a Spitfire by reading a book or anything, and nobody actually has to know how to do those things unless they do them for a living, but getting a chance to pretend to do these things in a game gives you a broader understanding and helps you understand and appreciate the people who do these jobs.