Just a wild and ridiculous thought regarding the possibility of simulating high stress situations for trainees. As some of you know there is a world-wide online network of people using flightsims, flying around in a virtual world that is also populated by folks acting as ATC. The major networks actually have rather high standards regarding the training and seriousity (sp?) of the participants. The software is also of surprisingly high standard and not far from what is actually used. There are frequently so-called Flyins organized for major areas such as London, LAX and so on that usually generate large amounts of traffic.
There are obvious reasons why official traning never can, or will, make use of such an environment but trainees can perhaps be pointed in that direction in their spare time, as opposed to playing WoW all night long
FYI, one such network is called Vatsim,
www.vatsim.net, there are others as well.
Starting a new thread, same content as this post.