Take a look above and tell me what you see. The image is generic, with credit to Condor 3, a glider simulator, but it is important for this article.

Did any thoughts cross your mind?

If you haven't found an answer yet, let me tell you why I think simulations are important and why they should be included in the training of operations personnel, especially dispatchers.

In college, we had no top-of-the-art computers. At the Avionics and Navigation classes, the professor brought his device from home, a pretty voluminous device back then, CRT display, tower unit, keyboard, mouse, and joystick, and played Microsoft Flight Simulator with us students. Don't ask me the software's edition number, because I forgot. It looked primitive by today's standards, but it made a huge difference. Our classes suddenly became interesting and rich in digestible information. The abstract A+B=C kind of hard-to-understand paper knowledge was converted into intuitive, attractive, and easy-to-understand concepts. The princess had kissed the frog.    

People learn mostly visually or by listening to stories. Simulators help by providing these visual cues, generating a comprehensive understanding of all the factors involved. Information becomes palpable; you can see things from several perspectives, including a pilot's. It is the same as the difference between reading a book and watching a film. I am not pledging to eliminate theoretical knowledge. I am saying to pair it with the visual world simulations provided. As such, you'll read the book and see its film adaptation. The informational digest will be complementary and complete.

I'm mostly a glider pilot who spends low hours on powered aircraft. Generally speaking, IMC is something that I don't want to hear of in real life. At the beginning of my flight dispatcher career, I couldn't understand some IFR approach procedures until I practiced them myself on a home simulator. My mind refused to understand something abstract, only by studying angles and symbols on paper.

I didn't have a proper image of how an FMC works until I fumbled with one, of course, on a home simulator.

I was clueless about what a bad weather approach looks like.

I was oblivious to how a good dispatcher really helps by optimizing route and flight parameters.

I was naïve about the crew's workload during take-off and landing.  

I put most of the puzzle together piece by piece. There's still a lot missing. Aviation is a continuous lesson.

For some reason, most training sessions for Ops personnel are abstract classes. This method is as obsolete as the Victorian era in a world of TikTok and visual stories.

In the nearby 2025, I sourced out at least one school that finally decided to add simulations to its syllabus. Of course, this beefs up the tuition fee. Thirty minutes of being a surrogate PIC scores around 1000E without fees. Strangely enough, I still have to see an organization that uses the much cheaper home simulators to provide intuitive training for its dispatchers. It's all about mental training.

Home simulators create the footpath from hobby to profession.

Some of the best people I worked with, played with, or even developed simulators. Others got introduced to aviation via home simulators. As students, their understanding of the industry was superior to the ones who didn't.

Are simulations important for industry mouse clickers? It's up to you to decide.