Maybe spending hours playing video games isn’t always a waste of time. Skills developed with a controller — quick reactions, hand-eye coordination and the ability to navigate a virtual environment at high speed — are turning out to have a very real application in modern drone technology.
According to a Ukrainian military instructor, recruits with gaming experience have become some of the best FPV drone pilots in training.
From Video Games to FPV Drones
Captain Anton Bobrovskyi, commander of the unmanned systems specialist training company at the 199th Training Center of Ukraine’s Air Assault Forces, says experience using a gamepad can be a strong indicator of how quickly someone may adapt to flying a drone.
He offered one particularly memorable example: people who managed to complete the notoriously difficult helicopter mission in Grand Theft Auto went on to become some of the best FPV drone operators.
For an entire generation of gamers who were once told they were wasting too much time in front of a screen, that is quite a twist.
The skills are not identical, of course. Flying an FPV drone in the real world requires specialized training, technical knowledge and considerably higher stakes. But familiarity with controllers, spatial orientation and fast decision-making appears to give some recruits an advantage when training begins.
Drone Training Is Becoming More Specialized
Ukraine’s increasing reliance on unmanned systems has also made drone training much more sophisticated.
According to Bobrovskyi, training for pilots of multirotor reconnaissance drones can take up to about 15 days, while preparation for FPV and heavier bomber-drone systems can take roughly a month. Ukraine has also expanded training involving fixed-wing strike drones.
The military increasingly relies not only on pilots but also on people with backgrounds in IT, electronics and hardware. Technical specialists repair equipment, update firmware and modify systems in workshops supporting drone units.
Gaming Skills Meet the Real World
The story is another example of how skills developed in unexpected places can become useful as technology changes.
Video games have long been associated with entertainment. But the same basic abilities that gamers practice for years — operating controllers almost instinctively, reacting quickly to movement and navigating three-dimensional environments — can carry over into other technologies.
So the next time someone says gaming is nothing but wasted time, there may now be an unusual counterargument.
Sometimes, apparently, all those hours holding a controller really do teach you something.
By NJ RADAR Team