All About Flight Simulators
No matter how much studying or classroom experience you’ve had, you’re not prepared to fly an aircraft until you’ve spent some time in a flight simulator. Flight simulators combine a physical re-creation of a cockpit, an integrated software system that lets the “pilot” control the plane’s systems, and a visual display that mimics what a pilot would see in flight.
Use
Flight simulators are designed to train future pilots on the plane’s controls, navigational aids, and other technology. They have become a standard part of pilot training, and the FAA requires a certain number of simulator hours to be logged for each of the flying licenses it awards.
The purpose of flight simulators is to give the pilot a virtual simulation of real flight conditions, in order to better prepare them for actual time in the sky. These simulators range in technical complexity, but most contain a physical recreation of a cockpit’s levers, dials, and switches, along with a screen simulating outside conditions, and radios connecting the “cockpit” to air traffic control. Sophisticated simulators even move in three dimensions, altering a pilots sense of balance; this lets aviators get a physical idea of what it feels like to pitch and yaw inside an aircraft.
Besides giving pilots a sense of an aircraft’s controls, simulators are also a great place to try out extreme flight situations, such as bad weather and equipment failures. These situations are something that pilots in training will hopefully never have to experience in an actual aircraft, and the simulator is effectively the only place that pilots can safely train for these situations.
History
The history of flight simulators is nearly as old as the history of modern flight. The first company to commercially develop flight simulators was Link Systems, in the late ‘20s. The U.S. and British Air Corps recognized the usefulness of these simulators, and began using them to train pilots for WWII. Early simulators were mainly designed to familiarize pilots with the controls, although they also contained rudimentary motion feedback mechanisms.
WWII saw great advances in electronics and data collection, allowing companies to manufacture much more sophisticated simulators. Electronics components brought simulators more instrumentation and feedback systems that allowed pilots to better see the results of their navigation techniques; data was collected from actual aircraft flights to allow designers to make simulators that responded as a real aircraft would. The development of TV and screen technology also allowed visual systems to be built into simulators.
As technology progressed into the digital and computer age in the 1970s, so did flight simulation. Digital systems allowed for more accurate real-time feedback, and by the ‘70s computers had advanced enough to integrate them into flight systems. Computer graphics developed during this time as well, allowing better visual simulations to be incorporated into the systems. Today’s flight simulators reflect how far we’ve come technologically since the ‘70s: Flight simulation software that once required a room-sized CPU to process can now be done on a consumer-grade computer.
Source:
Brief History of Flight Simulation. (2011) R. L. Page. Penn State University.