Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are being developed as an alternative to conventional transportation, which comes with great timing as there is a global shortage of skilled commercial drivers. However, the complexity of the driving task is extremely difficult for an AI system to solve, meaning that SAE level 5 vehicles are quite far away. During this interim period where we will have public roads with mixed traffic, remote operation could be a solution for facilitating the introduction of AVs. 

As a remote operation station will be more similar to a simulator environment compared to a conventional cab, there might be a broader base for future recruitment of operators compared to drivers. This paper consists of subjective ratings from two simulator studies, comparing the performance of experienced drivers and experienced video gamers. Here we present the perceived performance and comfort of the simulator experiments, while comparing the groups in different conditions to see if one has an advantage over the other as potential employees.