The Earliest Simulations

Since the earliest days of flight, pilots realized the need for some form of training before taking control of a dangerous and unwieldy aircraft. At the start, pilots were familiarized with the controls and trained on grounded planes, slowly moving on to taxiing, hopping the plane short distances, and finally full flight. It soon became clear that there was a real need for training devices to help get pilots acclimated to airplanes, without having to actually use the real plane. The first of these grounded devices was called the Sanders Teacher. It was simply an aircraft mockup mounted on a universal joint in an exposed position and facing into the wind. While better than nothing, the Sanders Teacher proved unsatisfactory and more sophisticated devices like the simulator pictured below were soon developed.
**This early device consisted of two half-sections of a barrel mounted and moved manually to represent the pitch and roll of the airplane, something the Sanders Teacher could not do.

The Link Trainers

The Link Trainers were a series of grounded flight simulators created between the early 1930's and the early 1950's by the Link Corporation. They were the next generation of manual flight simulators created out of the need for a safe way to teach new pilots how to fly by Instrument Flight Rules.

"Link's first military sales came as a result of the Air Mail Scandal, when the Army Air Corps took over carriage of U.S. Air Mail. Twelve pilots were killed in a 78 day period, due to their unfamiliarity with Instrument Flying Conditions. The large scale loss of life prompted the Air Corps to look at a number of solutions, including Link's pilot trainer. The Air Corps was given a stark demonstration of the potential of instrument training, when Link flew in to a meeting in conditions of fog that the Air Corps evaluation team regarded as unflyable. As a result, the Air Corps ordered the first six pilot trainers at $3,500 each." -Wikipedia

The Link Trainer:

The First Visual Simulations

In as early as 1939 the Link Corporation was attempting to add visual simulations to its Link Trainer. In 1941 they developed the Celestial Navigator Trainer, which allowed for cross Atlantic and night training. It represented stars on a dome positioned over the Link Trainer. The stars could be moved to correspond with time and changes in location, giving training pilots the ability to practice navigation.

Later on, more advanced analog visualizations were created to help give pilots the feeling they were actually flying. Many used a mock up terrain visual system. In this system a camera was "flown" over the model terrain and the picture displayed to the pilot. The camera changed in response the the pilots control actions, giving the pilot the visual simulation of flight. The method was limited however, and only small areas of the ground were able to be simulated, usually the area around an airport or, typical terrain and ground targets in military simulations.

**The Celestial Navigator

**The Mock Up Visual Terrain System

The Dawn of Computers in Flight Simulation

Beginning in the 1940's, flight simulators first began to utilized analog computers to help solve the equations of flight. In the 1950's, analog computers became common in flight simulators. They had the advantage of great speed and fit well into the then analog world of the aircraft cockpit and its displays. By the early 1960's it became obvious that more advanced applications such as the new Gemini Space Mission simulators would require more advanced digital computers.

Thanks in great part to NASA and the space program, advances in digital computers continued to improve the abilities of flight simulators. In 1972, the Singer Corporation developed the collimating lens apparatus. This new lens was combined with a curved mirror and beam splitter, giving it the ability to project Out of The Cockpit Window (OTW) views to the pilot at a distant focus for the first time. These collimated monitors greatly improved the realism of flight simulation. These mirrors were further developed in the late 70's and 80's, and in conjunction with improved computer simulation technologies gave way to the modern simulators we see today.

Modern Commercial Flight Simulators

Modern commercial flight simulators have come a long way from their simplistic analog roots. In addition to realistic visualizations and full control replication, modern simulators also incorporate motion bases or platforms to provide cues of real motion. These motion bases or platforms can can provide about +/- 35 degrees of the three rotations pitch, roll and yaw, and about one metre of the three linear movements of heave, sway and surge. Take a look at a modern simulator in use:

A Chinese 757-767 Simulator

Home Simulation

With the advent of the personal computer, home flight simulation became possible for the first time. Beginning with rudimentary replications of flight simulation, home flight simulation has progressed an incredible amount in the past twenty five years. Today's flight simulations are extremely realistic and give home enthusiasts a great idea of what it is like to actually fly a plane. The following chronicles this evolution.

Year	Name	System	Features	Screenshot
1980	FS1 Flight Simulator 1	Apple II	4 color/monochrome, with a 2-gauge panel (airspeed, altitude), on cassette tape
1981	Updated Release FS1 Flight Simulator 1	Apple II	Altitude-counter, enhanced terrain lay-out, "3D"-mountains and other structures, 4 Colors, 5 1/4 floppy
1982	Microsoft releases FS 1.0 (created by subLOGIC)	IBM-PC	4 color (+ dithering), panel with 8 gauges, new co-ordinate system, 4 scenery areas (20 airports) , 2 COM radios and DME (no ADF), 9 view directions, weather, slew, simulated aircraft is a Cessna 182.
1982	FS2 Flight Simulator 2	Atari ST, Commodore Amiga and Apple MacIntosh and more supported by various releases of FS2	6-color, solid filled, 4 areas, now with 80 airports, more roads, rivers, mountains, buildings, bridges, ADF, simulated aircraft is a Piper Archer.
1988	FS3 Flight Simulator 3	PC's Only	16-color EGA (640x350), new panel, new high resolution scenery structure, better weather/time of day features, flight recording/analysis, multiplayer. Mediocre flight model.
1989	FS4 Flight Simulator 4	PC's Only	Much better flight models, improved scenery, random weather, dynamic scenery, approach lighting systems, "aircraft design" (experimental aircraft), Schweitzer 2-32 sailplane.
1993-95	FS5 Flight Simulator 5 - 5.1	PC's Only	640x400, 256-color, new "true" world co-ordinate system, better mountains, buildings, aircraft, weather, sounds etc. First real textures, handle scenery libraries including wide use of satellite imagery, faster performance and a barrage of weather effects: storms, 3D clouds and fog became true-to-life elements in the Flight Simulator world.
1996	Flight Simulator 95	PC's Only	First Windows version, 640x480, easy installation, 50% higher frame rate, better haze, completely textured, new planes (Extra 300S), etc.
1997	Flight Simulator 98	PC's Only	15 year milestone, higher resolution (1280x1024, 16 bit color), first true helicopter simulation (Bell JetRanger 206B)
1999	Flight Simulator 2000	PC's Only	17000 new airports, 3D-elevation terrain, better textures, Boeing 737-400, Mooney, King Air and Concorde. GPS Feature.
2001	Flight Simulator 2002	PC's Only	Improved 3D-elevation (mesh-scenery), AutoGen buildings, trees, virtual cockpit with working instruments, AI aircraft at airports and in the air, "live" ATC. Smooth performance.
2003	Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight	PC's Only	Great weather and clouds. Improved mesh and Autogen, much better AI aircraft and ATC. Nice old planes in keeping with the theme, better aircraft in general. Very smooth performance.
2006	Flight Simulator X	PC's Only	New aircraft, improved multiplayer support, including the ability for two players to fly a single plane, and players to occupy a control tower (available in the Deluxe Edition), and improved scenery with higher resolution ground textures.

Combat Simulators

Although many of the lifelike flight simulators have been primarily for computers, flight simulation games are not strictly the realm of realistic flight enthusiast. Air combat games that simulate flight have been extremely successful in the mainstream and boast dazzling graphics and features. One of the most successful of these games has been the Ace Combat Franchise. Here is some incredible video of its latest installment Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation

Stunning graphics coupled with exciting gameplay have made combat simulators quite popular consol games.	Sophisticated joysticks have also been made available to the console crowd:

The Future of Flight Simulation

The future of flight simulation lies in the next generation of professional flight simulations. Ulike its predecessors, these new machines will be capable of reproducing the forces experienced by pilots. They will provide for unlimited rotation via a gimballed cockpit. The gimbal sub-system is supported by a framework which adds vertical motion. The framework is mounted on a large rotating platform with an adjustable radius. This new system will create sustainable g-force simulation with unlimited rotational freedom. This, combined with advances in visualization will make the latest simulators difficult to distinguish from actually flying. Here are two examples of these next generation machines.

The Desdemona Flight Simulation system for the Netherlands-based research organization TNO	The Mimicker True 3D Simulator

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