None. The GPUs are only driving the displays, you don't need a monster gamer GPU for that. And industrial systems like these use workstation-class certified GPUs for extra reliability. In other words, each GPU cost more than a Titan XP and they can't even play Minecraft.
From what I understand. Tom Scott is a bit of a perfectionist. I have heard him talk about taking multiple shots in order to get the best shoot. He has spoken about it in his "park bench" series.
I suspect it was semi-known. The last cut away from the tower screens is only about 15 seconds before that, so they could have filmed several takes of that bit to get the timing. In the US, you could just stand there with a receive-only radio and listen to the tower give takeoff clearance and then start filming. I seem to think that's illegal in the UK. However, they could also just watch planes taxi, wait for one to approach the take-off end of the runway, and then roll as soon as it started moving onto the runway. Notice he glances behind him a couple of times during that last 15 seconds, so I think he knew. Nicely done, Tom and Matt!
London, now so expensive that not only can the people working there, not afford to live there, now they can't even afford to have the people working there, actually working there. That being said, very interesting video. :D
I know of someone living in London who's been homeless for a while due to no fault of their own other than landlord being greedy and kicking them out at the end of the contract and not being able to find a place to live.
This is just the tower operators for takeoff and landing. As soon as they leave the airport they are handled by people sitting in some secure windowless building just as far away looking at radar maps, because that is how air traffic is controlled 99% of the flight time.
That is true, but druing takeoff and landing the risk of an accident is the highest. I'm not saying that a virtual tower is a bad idea, but it's understandable that it's not common already.
People in the comments being concerned about things they have no insight into. Meanwhile in Control Center Ops rooms, from which air traffic during enroute and approach phase is controlled, controllers are already sitting hundreds of kilometers away from where the traffic is happening, working with radar data coming from radar stations all over different countries. Every single system, from a simple wire connecting the center to the radar data, down to the controllers workstation, has at least 2 backups. There is 2 or 3 fallback modes for every kind of failure. Even in the worst case scenario of a total blackout, planes won't be allowed to land or depart from the airport in question or enter the sectors that have failed, and controllers revert back to good old paper strip controlling and procedural separation to keep everyone safe and get them out of there. Air travel is incredibly safe and there is a good reason why. The people developing these systems are not stupid. Everything is designed with the thought in mind, that if the system and all backups fail, people die.
Frido15. Exactly. Aerospace is difficult, but takes safety far more seriously than other forms of engineering --we have to due to the scale. And it pays off --air travel is one of the safest. More people died in the extra road accidents after 911 than in 911 itself. Crash a car and they'll just clear away the wreck. An airliner so much as gets a crack and a whole industry will have to change to prevent it
I love hearing about all the engineering and safety that goes into modern air travel. It's so nice to hear about people that know what they're doing and do their best to do everything right.
I just finished a week spent in the control tower of Milan Malpensa airport, standing side-by-side with the air traffic controllers, for a school project. One day the visibility reduced significantly, to the point that all the operations were being handled exclusively via ground/air radar screens, and the controller (ironically) pointed out: "look, now I could simply work from home with two computers screens" since outside the windows we could not see anything... Also, few month ago a project of controlling Milan Linate airport using an almost identical system to the one described by Tom in the video has been tested successfully in Malpensa.
That's interesting. Understandably, there are concerns, but you're right that it may be safer. I wonder why the monitors were slightly different colors? Maybe it's just their angle in relation to the camera?
At least part of the reason the monitors are different colors is automatic white balance because of the sun. The light is a different color so the camera white balances differently.
Must be the different white balance, and it's understandable. If you can't see a thing on 2-3 screens because the sun, then the same white balance isn't good either.
I've flown to airports where the ground station that dispenses information to pilots is in a different town (e.g. Tofino, Canada CYAZ). The system works; with the right tech (and lots of bandwidth) I can see how it could handle an airport as busy as London City. In my work we develop systems with five nines reliability (99.999% uptime, about three minutes downtime per year, for *any* reason). An application like this is six nines or better, not something you make with off-the-shelf hardware.
Under a second of lag between continents isn't that much of an issue. If it was the internet wouldn't really work. The 1 second of lag limit mentioned in the video feels like a conservative maximum to me rather than what is actually achievable.
To me this sounds very cool and very safe. I really like it that aircraft identified by call signs on the actual screens. That's really got to count for a lot. Thanks for the great video.
It has one major safety feature built into it by reason alone. That being of an event is catastrophic enough to distrust communications and interfere with all the backup plans, then it stands to reason no plane would be taking off or landing seeing as it’s probably not safe for a plane to operate. That negates the need for the tower. It’s honestly more safe than normal and I wouldn’t mind this being implemented in other airports.
Tom actually makes the coolest videos! A fun fact is that due to the distance between the airport and London's famous landmarks, only a few specific pilots are allowed to fly to and from London City Airport.
As strange as it seems I’ve known about this for a while. My dad works for NATS in swanick as an air traffic control engineer. Looks fascinating I must say. Been to that building a couple of times but never inside. Thanks for uploading
Well, for those of us with a fear of flying, I'd say I won't feel less safe if the tower's 80 miles away. I'll still board a plane, whenever I have to, for the very same reason I do anything else in life . Because if I didn't fight my fears, there'd be no point in getting up in the morning.
While I do certainly understand how someone can have a fear of flying, how can you people get in a car knowing that at any moment you're driving over 50 km/h some rusty bolts on one wheel or on the axle nobody has ever bothered to check could break loose, send you right into the next tree and kill you at an instant? Being in control is just an illusion while driving a car or even walking down the street. When something really goes south, you aren't in control anymore. Neither on an airplane, nor anywhere else.
Well, we all fear things for different and sometimes irrational reasons. I get that facing your fears might not actually give you control over a certain situation, but it will definitely put you in charge of your own life. Because living in fear is a life without a choice and that's no way to live. We don't have to be in control to feel safe, sometimes knowing we have a choice is really all we need.
My immediate question was, "what if a camera fails" but the failsafe has me satisfied. I can find a hundred reasons why these cameras will be safer and easier to use. Very nifty!
NightEye87 Well They are still testing. :D But to be honest the refresh rate of the feed doesn't look that good either. My brain would hurt after 10min
Part of Cork's operations are handled by Dublin, possibly the overnight. When it was on the news everyone was really angry about it, but part of that was Dublin's continued meddling and stealing of Cork's business, but with a safety worry put on top. People rang in to radio talk shows to say how unsafe they felt it was. But it is still a manned tower during normal hours, so it isn't fully empty/digital.
The same 'feels scary' but is actually safer can also be applied to driver-less cars and pilot-less planes. It feels unsafe that there isn't anyone there to keep the big heap of metal going in the right direction, but we can already see with planes that humans are far less reliable than AI and that, as scary as it may seem, replacing pilots with robots is by far the safest thing we can do.
Modern flight management systems and autopilots could actually be able to fully perform 99% of all flights. It's that remaining 1% you cannot automate that makes the difference. And unless you don't put the AI in a humanoid body, at which point a regular ol' human pilot would be just cheaper by orders of magnitude, you could never fully respond to the extreme edge cases where just everything breaks down and you just have to find a creative solution to get out of there alive. See Apollo 13, Gimli Glider or Qantas flight 32.
Marian Keller It doesn’t have to be perfect - just better than humans. For every Apollo 13 there is a pilot - either in error or on purpose - steering a plane into a mountain.
As a UK tower controller I'm gutted at this change in our industry. I love the buzz of working at an airport and looking out of real windows. The idea of swapping it for looking at screens all day in a windowless room in a warehouse in a nondescript industrial estate somewhere is just heartbreaking. Saves money though, so I guess that's the only thing that matters anymore.
In a sense, this could provide much safer airport control. You can just replicate the control room WITH live and/or simulated feeds exactly for training. A new trainee would see the exact same screens and controls during training as when on duty. You just can't do that with a classic airport tower.
That's basically how tower training happens now. There are incredibly realistic simulators with some incredible voice recognition that the cadets get trained on to get used to how to actually do the job.
TOM! You were about a mile from my house! I worked on the software installation in that facility (the en route control systems, not the tower control) in about 1997, before it went live. It was a wonderful building to work in :)
Hmm... to be honest, I can't remember much about it, and what I can remember may be sensitive information that shouldn't be made public! But I do remember being impressed with the number of failsafes, something which is also mentioned in this video. Air Traffic people really do (understandably) have a very cautious approach to everything. When my contract was over, I was definitely more comfortable about flying, not less :)
The thing that feels wrong about it is not actually being there. They have all these plans in case of failures, but that doesn’t stop us as humans thinking there is more we can do to help in a bad situation if we are actually there and not just witnessing it from cameras.
this looks awesome and could be a real advantage over traditional towers. I would kind of fear that the atmosphere in this shut room is a bit depressing as a workplace, though
This might come in part from what he mentioned about being able to look into the sun. The screens probably are calibrated, but each one adjusts only its own image, without checking the neighbouring screens.
I spent a day once in a mock training course for remote air traffic control, and as a relative outsider, I was quite convinced. Apart from being incredibly safe (they have to be), one of their greatest advantage is being cost effective - you can wire up several smaller airports to one building, and conduct all controlling, training, etc. from the same place. Not only does this save up money and space for the airports, this way they can ensure that they recieve a service comparable to more important airports, with the latest tech and well trained crew.
There've been so many runway accidents that this is the way forward for sure. Those cameras/screen offer better visibility, it's cheaper to build and those AR features take this into another level.
That's just so cool. We're creeping closer and closer to the things we've imagined in sci-fi books and movies. I'm just waiting for holographic technology now.
Hi Tom I work in CCTV at a lower level than this but for big corporates etc. I am VERY impressed with all the failovers, redundancies, not relying on public networks etc. Someone has REALLY thought about this.
It's not across the Thames. Both London City Airport and ExCeL sit north of the river. You'd need to cross Royal Albert and Royal Victoria Docks to get to ExCeL from LCY.
I’d like to see them upgrade the screen to curved ones and with less bezels so they feel more window like rather than bunch of monitors stuck side by side. I’m positive the tech by 2020 is gonna be four times better than what we have today. I’m excited!
Edwin O'Gray 2020 is only 2 years away. I don't think screens today are four times better than two years ago. Also an advantage of separate screens is easy replacement if one fails.
Well even if they replace the monitors with a huge curved display, there are still only ~14 cameras on the tower, so the image will be stitched together and might look even less real...
The people in the Control Tower for YVR in Vancouver are in a building in Newton in Surrey BC. It is in an earthquake-proof building and has been there for at least 10 years with never an issue of safety for the traveling public.
Usually when it comes to people using old Operating Systems, it’s because the software they use hasn’t been upgraded to current gen/it would take too much effort to actually replace them all, especially if they all must be compatible with each other and work is 24/7
The software probably isn't compatible with newer version of windows, so it would take a long time to actually have to update it, along with updating all the computers and everything and making sure all tower control points have the same version and making sure it all works, would take an extremely long time. Not to mention the overall cost of it all. It's just not worth it.
Wow imagine cameras watching what is essentially public property. (I know a lot of airports a private but they're so heavily regulated they might as well be public)
If you're using cameras anyway, why not expand a bit with heat for example? Would you be still able to see airplanes during thick fog? Then again, they probably haven't overlooked something that sounds so basic as putting up a few extra cameras.
I’m 50/50 on this - would much rather a control tower with a few clever screens that could layer over plane info on the control tower windows. Great video as always, Tom 👍🏼
The Airport in Kiruna (Sweden) is planned to be controlled from Stockholm 900 km away. The Swedish military forces are not happy about it. I can understand why.
I remember, not long before the pandemic, I went to scouts and one of the other boys there managed to get us invited go to the NATS building near our town (I think it had something to do with his mum’s occupation). That day was amazing.
What's up with the obvious colors being different from one screen to another? It's not just viewing angle since they're not angled much from each other.
Since they're separate cameras, I would assume that it's from different exposure and white balance settings that are automatically adjusted to the different light conditions in each view. Since best visibility per camera is desired here, it's better to have those differences between cameras, instead of them being set globally for all of them.
Just to reiterate what I said in the video: this isn't sponsored. I'll always declare, obviously, if a video is!
Tom Scott hi
Tom Scott your comment is 3 days old yet the video just came out
So there’s nothing to declare here then
Just to state that there is nothing to state. 🤣🤣🤣
olibearws Scheduled upload?
"if I'm flying out of here in 2020, I'll give the cameras a wave"
Well that didn't age well
Why?
I was literally just thinking the same thing LMAO - Was just about to comment then I saw this...
@@maximebaidakov Why? Seriously? Ever heard of Caronavirus and lockdown?
@@metal-potato I flew from UK (Manchester) to Netherlands literally 2 days ago
@@metal-potato shhh they're living under a rock
Ultimate gaming rig
BlackEagle352 flightsim
Except if you loose, you potentially spend the rest of your life behind bars and forever will be known for mass manslaughter...
literally 12 4K+ infinity displays there, wonder how many Titan XP it has
None. The GPUs are only driving the displays, you don't need a monster gamer GPU for that.
And industrial systems like these use workstation-class certified GPUs for extra reliability.
In other words, each GPU cost more than a Titan XP and they can't even play Minecraft.
But can it run Crysis?
the timing on that plane at the end!
And only on shot 1,486!
It's almost like it was planned by an experienced documentarian and videographer.
Not really. More like just asking if he had the camera on it (enough, in time). They probably attempted to time it with a presumably known takeoff.
From what I understand. Tom Scott is a bit of a perfectionist. I have heard him talk about taking multiple shots in order to get the best shoot. He has spoken about it in his "park bench" series.
I suspect it was semi-known.
The last cut away from the tower screens is only about 15 seconds before that, so they could have filmed several takes of that bit to get the timing.
In the US, you could just stand there with a receive-only radio and listen to the tower give takeoff clearance and then start filming. I seem to think that's illegal in the UK.
However, they could also just watch planes taxi, wait for one to approach the take-off end of the runway, and then roll as soon as it started moving onto the runway. Notice he glances behind him a couple of times during that last 15 seconds, so I think he knew.
Nicely done, Tom and Matt!
“If I’m on a flight out of here in 2020”
*laughs in global pandemic*
this quote didn't age well
I laughed at that quote tbh.
say, why are we watching this in 2020 anyways... youtube works in mysterious ways i guess...
hmm... why is this video recommended to me in 2020?
YES!!!!!
London, now so expensive that not only can the people working there, not afford to live there, now they can't even afford to have the people working there, actually working there.
That being said, very interesting video. :D
Yes, once the "work there" part is solved, all tunnels can be closed and people will never have to leave their hive.
ATCs seem to earn at least £50k, you can afford to live in London on that money.
Neil Aitken live in London in a shitty apartment? Yeah no thanks.
I know of someone living in London who's been homeless for a while due to no fault of their own other than landlord being greedy and kicking them out at the end of the contract and not being able to find a place to live.
marin county in a nutshell
Ground control to Major Tom...
Catpirate too appropriate.
🎵Ground Controol to Maaajor Tyom...🎶
🎶
Your circuits dead, there's something wrong can you hear me Major Tom?
This is Major Tom to Ground Control
This is just the tower operators for takeoff and landing. As soon as they leave the airport they are handled by people sitting in some secure windowless building just as far away looking at radar maps, because that is how air traffic is controlled 99% of the flight time.
finally someone gets it
TRACON and ARTCC ftw
Same facility actually- Did work experience there a couple of years back
That is true, but druing takeoff and landing the risk of an accident is the highest. I'm not saying that a virtual tower is a bad idea, but it's understandable that it's not common already.
If it was actually windowless it would probably be against workplace conditions in Germany. 😁
Next up: Controlling an Airport from a VR headset
Next up: controlling an airplane at home with VR
Btw love your vids.
The USAF already is training their A-10 pilots on DCS A-10C with VR heatsets as an additional tool.
Wait, isn’t that just the next Microsoft Flight Simulator?
People in the comments being concerned about things they have no insight into. Meanwhile in Control Center Ops rooms, from which air traffic during enroute and approach phase is controlled, controllers are already sitting hundreds of kilometers away from where the traffic is happening, working with radar data coming from radar stations all over different countries. Every single system, from a simple wire connecting the center to the radar data, down to the controllers workstation, has at least 2 backups. There is 2 or 3 fallback modes for every kind of failure. Even in the worst case scenario of a total blackout, planes won't be allowed to land or depart from the airport in question or enter the sectors that have failed, and controllers revert back to good old paper strip controlling and procedural separation to keep everyone safe and get them out of there.
Air travel is incredibly safe and there is a good reason why. The people developing these systems are not stupid. Everything is designed with the thought in mind, that if the system and all backups fail, people die.
Frido15. Exactly. Aerospace is difficult, but takes safety far more seriously than other forms of engineering --we have to due to the scale. And it pays off --air travel is one of the safest.
More people died in the extra road accidents after 911 than in 911 itself.
Crash a car and they'll just clear away the wreck. An airliner so much as gets a crack and a whole industry will have to change to prevent it
I love hearing about all the engineering and safety that goes into modern air travel. It's so nice to hear about people that know what they're doing and do their best to do everything right.
Very pragmatic viewpoint on "it feels wrong". Thumbs up!
that timing at the end is gorgeous
I just finished a week spent in the control tower of Milan Malpensa airport, standing side-by-side with the air traffic controllers, for a school project. One day the visibility reduced significantly, to the point that all the operations were being handled exclusively via ground/air radar screens, and the controller (ironically) pointed out: "look, now I could simply work from home with two computers screens" since outside the windows we could not see anything...
Also, few month ago a project of controlling Milan Linate airport using an almost identical system to the one described by Tom in the video has been tested successfully in Malpensa.
I love that the video ends with the timing so perfect, that a plane takes off. Tom's a one-take-wonder :D
Listen to the tower controller (118.075 MHz at LCY) to tell when a plane is going to take off and plan accordingly.
Why the hell is your username a GUID?
I love how Tom's so surprised when the video is seamless. Love it!
That's interesting. Understandably, there are concerns, but you're right that it may be safer. I wonder why the monitors were slightly different colors? Maybe it's just their angle in relation to the camera?
At least part of the reason the monitors are different colors is automatic white balance because of the sun. The light is a different color so the camera white balances differently.
They definitely need to fix that. It’s either differing white balance between cameras, or uncalibrated screens. Yuck.
Must be the different white balance, and it's understandable. If you can't see a thing on 2-3 screens because the sun, then the same white balance isn't good either.
Looking good has nothing to do with it, so "yuck" is exactly the kind of sentiment that should never be going into the design of such systems.
I would guess it's difficult to match the balance and calibration of multiple cameras (at different angles in relation to the sun) and monitors.
I've flown to airports where the ground station that dispenses information to pilots is in a different town (e.g. Tofino, Canada CYAZ). The system works; with the right tech (and lots of bandwidth) I can see how it could handle an airport as busy as London City.
In my work we develop systems with five nines reliability (99.999% uptime, about three minutes downtime per year, for *any* reason). An application like this is six nines or better, not something you make with off-the-shelf hardware.
Maybe in the future all our airtraffic is outsourced to India or something.
You are heading towards Canary Wharf sir. Please do the needful.
Nowerdy that would be a long trip from the city centre to the airport!
You would need a airport to be able to go to the airport.
No, the future is not outsourcing to India, it's no people involved at all. That is what they want to do next in the US....
Under a second of lag between continents isn't that much of an issue. If it was the internet wouldn't really work.
The 1 second of lag limit mentioned in the video feels like a conservative maximum to me rather than what is actually achievable.
If you had dedicated channels, it would take less than 200ms to and from India. Using the internet with its numerous hops is another thing.
Glad to have you back, Tom. I enjoyed the content from the guest creators but it's nice to have your familiar style once more.
That was timed in the end with that plane taking off. Good job Tom!
To me this sounds very cool and very safe. I really like it that aircraft identified by call signs on the actual screens. That's really got to count for a lot. Thanks for the great video.
Especially since the label overlay can be made highly visible in all lighting conditions, that seems like a huge improvement.
It has one major safety feature built into it by reason alone. That being of an event is catastrophic enough to distrust communications and interfere with all the backup plans, then it stands to reason no plane would be taking off or landing seeing as it’s probably not safe for a plane to operate. That negates the need for the tower. It’s honestly more safe than normal and I wouldn’t mind this being implemented in other airports.
Tom actually makes the coolest videos! A fun fact is that due to the distance between the airport and London's famous landmarks, only a few specific pilots are allowed to fly to and from London City Airport.
Very Fun Fact. Terrorism is hilarious ;)
It's more to do with obstacles rather than potential terrorism targets, the airport is slap bang in the centre of the actual city.
2020: Just kidding, you can't fly.
(Or shouldn't, at least).
That ending was timed perfectly!
As strange as it seems I’ve known about this for a while. My dad works for NATS in swanick as an air traffic control engineer. Looks fascinating I must say. Been to that building a couple of times but never inside. Thanks for uploading
But can it run Crysis?
The most important of questions!
777anarchist yes but on low
It has to. What else would they do whole day?
But can it run Doom?
@@coderes9913 All can run doom.
Well, for those of us with a fear of flying, I'd say I won't feel less safe if the tower's 80 miles away.
I'll still board a plane, whenever I have to, for the very same reason I do anything else in life . Because if I didn't fight my fears, there'd be no point in getting up in the morning.
While I do certainly understand how someone can have a fear of flying, how can you people get in a car knowing that at any moment you're driving over 50 km/h some rusty bolts on one wheel or on the axle nobody has ever bothered to check could break loose, send you right into the next tree and kill you at an instant?
Being in control is just an illusion while driving a car or even walking down the street. When something really goes south, you aren't in control anymore. Neither on an airplane, nor anywhere else.
Well, we all fear things for different and sometimes irrational reasons.
I get that facing your fears might not actually give you control over a certain situation, but it will definitely put you in charge of your own life. Because living in fear is a life without a choice and that's no way to live.
We don't have to be in control to feel safe, sometimes knowing we have a choice is really all we need.
Tom's videos just make me feel happy and hopeful for the world
My immediate question was, "what if a camera fails" but the failsafe has me satisfied. I can find a hundred reasons why these cameras will be safer and easier to use. Very nifty!
Towers can operate without visibility - even if all cameras fail it won't be worse than plain fog
3:41 "And if I'm on a flight out of here in 2020"
Well...
"Tell me we got that!"
"Erm...kinda?"
Oh my, that white balance difference is making my brain melt..
NightEye87 Well They are still testing. :D
But to be honest the refresh rate of the feed doesn't look that good either. My brain would hurt after 10min
They literally said this was from testing cameras on a crane, the actual setup isn't finished.
cityuser I guess they have thier work cut out for them. They will get there in time, I am sure about that.
Yeah I get that this is just a test, but atleast set the white balance the same across all cameras :p
no as the obviously different tones means it is clear moving from one screen to the next
That skyline at sunset looks so great on those screens :D
Part of Cork's operations are handled by Dublin, possibly the overnight. When it was on the news everyone was really angry about it, but part of that was Dublin's continued meddling and stealing of Cork's business, but with a safety worry put on top. People rang in to radio talk shows to say how unsafe they felt it was. But it is still a manned tower during normal hours, so it isn't fully empty/digital.
The same 'feels scary' but is actually safer can also be applied to driver-less cars and pilot-less planes. It feels unsafe that there isn't anyone there to keep the big heap of metal going in the right direction, but we can already see with planes that humans are far less reliable than AI and that, as scary as it may seem, replacing pilots with robots is by far the safest thing we can do.
Modern flight management systems and autopilots could actually be able to fully perform 99% of all flights. It's that remaining 1% you cannot automate that makes the difference. And unless you don't put the AI in a humanoid body, at which point a regular ol' human pilot would be just cheaper by orders of magnitude, you could never fully respond to the extreme edge cases where just everything breaks down and you just have to find a creative solution to get out of there alive. See Apollo 13, Gimli Glider or Qantas flight 32.
Marian Keller It doesn’t have to be perfect - just better than humans. For every Apollo 13 there is a pilot - either in error or on purpose - steering a plane into a mountain.
As a UK tower controller I'm gutted at this change in our industry. I love the buzz of working at an airport and looking out of real windows. The idea of swapping it for looking at screens all day in a windowless room in a warehouse in a nondescript industrial estate somewhere is just heartbreaking.
Saves money though, so I guess that's the only thing that matters anymore.
this is awesome. how have i not heard of this until now considering i work in uk aerospace
Jay Foreman will hate this video knowing his unfavourable views on the airport
In a sense, this could provide much safer airport control. You can just replicate the control room WITH live and/or simulated feeds exactly for training. A new trainee would see the exact same screens and controls during training as when on duty.
You just can't do that with a classic airport tower.
You can also have much more people working in the "tower" at once, reducing fatigue and increasing redundancy.
That's basically how tower training happens now. There are incredibly realistic simulators with some incredible voice recognition that the cadets get trained on to get used to how to actually do the job.
And they still have a telephone that looks like something out of a 1950s SciFi movie.
Operator, get me London city airport stat!
for optimal redundancy you need orthogonal technologies
@@mipmip5759 I hear they DO respond to smoke signals...
“If you want a flight out in 2020...”
That didn’t age well.
3:43 well, that might not be happening
TOM! You were about a mile from my house! I worked on the software installation in that facility (the en route control systems, not the tower control) in about 1997, before it went live. It was a wonderful building to work in :)
That's neat. Any posibility that you could say something more in detail about the inner workings?
Hmm... to be honest, I can't remember much about it, and what I can remember may be sensitive information that shouldn't be made public! But I do remember being impressed with the number of failsafes, something which is also mentioned in this video. Air Traffic people really do (understandably) have a very cautious approach to everything. When my contract was over, I was definitely more comfortable about flying, not less :)
There was some paperwork, as I recall. But I've not written anything here that's not either public information already or my personal opinion.
"if I'm flying out of here in 2020, I'll give the cameras a wave"
haha... HAHAHA.... HAHAHAHAHAH..... *sniff*
We allready have towers like that here in Norway. Think the tower in my city, Bodø, is remote controlling 2-3 smaller airports.
Good timing at the end
The thing that feels wrong about it is not actually being there. They have all these plans in case of failures, but that doesn’t stop us as humans thinking there is more we can do to help in a bad situation if we are actually there and not just witnessing it from cameras.
that seems a really smart idea; to have the people in tower not having to look over their shoulder, I dig it
this looks awesome and could be a real advantage over traditional towers. I would kind of fear that the atmosphere in this shut room is a bit depressing as a workplace, though
You do know that most air traffic controllers work in dark, closed rooms that are often miles from the nearest airport, don't you?
The most annoying part is the difference in the colour temperature in the screens.... CALIBRATE THOSE SCREENS...
This might come in part from what he mentioned about being able to look into the sun. The screens probably are calibrated, but each one adjusts only its own image, without checking the neighbouring screens.
Possible, not a bad shout. But in general there did appear to be a major colour difference between all the screens....
Dan Clarkson did not expect to see you here lmfao what’s up buddy?
Sorry, brain and memory are a bit shite, have we met before?
Dan Clarkson Danny boy from CA
So how many takes did you need to get that signoff perfectly timed with the pan to the plane taking off?
I hope this style of system really *takes off*
This seems like a great idea, we should use this on bigger airports, it improves the performance of the ATC which can save lives
I spent a day once in a mock training course for remote air traffic control, and as a relative outsider, I was quite convinced. Apart from being incredibly safe (they have to be), one of their greatest advantage is being cost effective - you can wire up several smaller airports to one building, and conduct all controlling, training, etc. from the same place. Not only does this save up money and space for the airports, this way they can ensure that they recieve a service comparable to more important airports, with the latest tech and well trained crew.
The room looked very cosy when the night-screens were on.
Probably a bit TOO cosy. I'd probably fall asleep out of boredom
Change always feels weird I personally think this is a good change as long as there is sufficient back up for when something fails.
"You want a flight out of here in 2020..." hahahahahahahahahahahaha no.
There've been so many runway accidents that this is the way forward for sure. Those cameras/screen offer better visibility, it's cheaper to build and those AR features take this into another level.
I want this as wallpaper in living room.
"If I'm on a flight out of here in 2020"
I laughed like Captain Raymond Holt eating a marshmallow
Those monitors NEEEEEEEEEED TO BE CALIBRATED
“If you want a flight out of here in 2020” 😂😂😂🤣 that quote didn’t age well 😅😂🤣
That's just so cool. We're creeping closer and closer to the things we've imagined in sci-fi books and movies. I'm just waiting for holographic technology now.
0:18 perfect timing surely there will be a lot of travel for them to observe then
Even with flight radar, that must have been really hard to time....awesome video as always!
Hi Tom
I work in CCTV at a lower level than this but for big corporates etc. I am VERY impressed with all the failovers, redundancies, not relying on public networks etc. Someone has REALLY thought about this.
That ending was too perfect, how many attempts did it take?
Is this the reason why this week's Park Bench was filmed... wherever it was filmed?
The bench is just outside the Excel centre, across the Thames from the airport, so yes, presumably.
It's not across the Thames. Both London City Airport and ExCeL sit north of the river. You'd need to cross Royal Albert and Royal Victoria Docks to get to ExCeL from LCY.
My mistake, for some reason in my mind, the bridge over the marina was over the entire river.
I’d like to see them upgrade the screen to curved ones and with less bezels so they feel more window like rather than bunch of monitors stuck side by side. I’m positive the tech by 2020 is gonna be four times better than what we have today. I’m excited!
Edwin O'Gray 2020 is only 2 years away. I don't think screens today are four times better than two years ago.
Also an advantage of separate screens is easy replacement if one fails.
Well even if they replace the monitors with a huge curved display, there are still only ~14 cameras on the tower, so the image will be stitched together and might look even less real...
The people in the Control Tower for YVR in Vancouver are in a building in Newton in Surrey BC. It is in an earthquake-proof building and has been there for at least 10 years with never an issue of safety for the traveling public.
can't see anything going wrong with that especially since the airport is directly in a big city
One of the cases where I marvel at the wonderful possibilities of computer augmentation.
360 degree view, able to control an airport from 90 miles away, and they still use Windows XP.
Catlord Ikr! Why?
How revolutionary
Catlord Atleast it isn’t vista.
Usually when it comes to people using old Operating Systems, it’s because the software they use hasn’t been upgraded to current gen/it would take too much effort to actually replace them all, especially if they all must be compatible with each other and work is 24/7
The software probably isn't compatible with newer version of windows, so it would take a long time to actually have to update it, along with updating all the computers and everything and making sure all tower control points have the same version and making sure it all works, would take an extremely long time. Not to mention the overall cost of it all. It's just not worth it.
Legendary timing at the end with the plane taking off
The British really do love their (surveillance) cameras.
Ecks dee superior yank smuggery
Wow imagine cameras watching what is essentially public property. (I know a lot of airports a private but they're so heavily regulated they might as well be public)
This.is.fascinating. Dayym I love your channel.
If you're using cameras anyway, why not expand a bit with heat for example? Would you be still able to see airplanes during thick fog? Then again, they probably haven't overlooked something that sounds so basic as putting up a few extra cameras.
Henk159 i actually doubt that thermal cameras would be usefull in thick fog
The fog would peobably block the heat signature
You don't even really need heat cameras. Just get a certified ground radar and you're good.
That smile on the `Tell me you got that` ☺☺
I’m 50/50 on this - would much rather a control tower with a few clever screens that could layer over plane info on the control tower windows. Great video as always, Tom 👍🏼
3:42 As it turns out, there are no flights in 2020.
1:16 One second lag!! they could really make use priority packets.
Two seconds actually, one for the camera feed to reach the tower and one for radio to reach the pilots at the airport.
Tom really has a knack for speeches at the end.
The Airport in Kiruna (Sweden) is planned to be controlled from Stockholm 900 km away. The Swedish military forces are not happy about it. I can understand why.
why is that?
I remember, not long before the pandemic, I went to scouts and one of the other boys there managed to get us invited go to the NATS building near our town (I think it had something to do with his mum’s occupation). That day was amazing.
The only bad feeling I have about this is the bezels!
They aren't compensating for the bezels so they have some over lap so they aren't missing anything.
Also real windows in real towers have real bezels as well so...
Come for the interesting story, stay for the epic timing of the outro.
What's up with the obvious colors being different from one screen to another? It's not just viewing angle since they're not angled much from each other.
allanw .
Since they're separate cameras, I would assume that it's from different exposure and white balance settings that are automatically adjusted to the different light conditions in each view. Since best visibility per camera is desired here, it's better to have those differences between cameras, instead of them being set globally for all of them.
"...squirted down a couple of really big pipes..." I love this guy!
This is the way everything is going, everything is going remote
Even some surgeries are being handled by experienced doctors from far away.
Wait until they realize that the internet can have latency and lag.
@@REAL-UNKNOWN-SHINOBI They aren't using the internet
Watching this 5 years later... Did it go into production? Tom, maybe a short update video about it?
Aah, that explains the bench under the flight path...
As always. Timed to perfection
I wonder if the cameras could do night vision so that the images displayed in the dead of night would be much clearer than just looking out a window.
And infrared/thermal vision to see through fog…
Heck, why not add a thermal overlay as well!
Wouldn't you need giant "Batman sized" inferred lights though?
Great video tom! Glad to see you back!
I legitimately thought I was watching Wendover Productions for a short while.
omg that last shot was perfect
So that's why you and Matt were so close to an airport in the park bench video? Cool!
Domen Bremec I thought the same😂
YAY! Tom's back!!!