Holiday Sale - The History of the Flight Simulator

It made me curious about the history of the flight simulator and flight sim games as well as their function in training pilots. She had already learned how to take the controls of a Curtiss JN-4 biplane, she was born in 1911 and by the age of 10. I was recently reading a newspaper and found an article about a female pilot who just passed away by the name of Elinor Smith.

A pneumatic device was invented which replicated the motion of a plane to teach instrument flying in a safe and inexpensive environment, then. The concept of flight simulation began in the military during World War I where they used a simulator to train the fighter pilots to lead their target when firing their machine guns.

But the cockpit was fully functional and provided adequate training, it had no motion or visual effects. Civil aviation began developing a flight simulator for use with the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, soon after. The Celestial Navigation Trainer was manufactured and could accommodate a whole bomber crew to simulate night flying missions, in 1941.

" Most people would have been deterred by the idea of learning "on the fly, even though Elinor soloed at the age of 15 and had her license at 16. I am sure it would have made a difference in the ability of a pilot to be prepared for all types of situations. Can you imagine if early pioneers like Elinor Smith could have had the opportunity to be trained in a flight simulator before climbing into the cockpit?

But hydraulics were incorporated in the 60s to give a more natural motion, and displacements of the plane, pitch, motion was improved in the 50s with a system that simulated the roll. And even then they just flew a camera over the model terrain and displayed it to the pilot, they didn't add in visual effects to the flight simulator until the 50s.

It was until the late 70s that flight simulator games were developed for personal use. A wider angle was created using the Wide-angle Infinity Display Equipment to improve on distance focus. In the 70s they figured out a way to make the visual more realistic my using a curved mirror to give a focal point in the distance.

And other terrain which is represented accurately in 10 degree chunks of scenery, hills, lakes, cities, level 0 is used to show low-resolution coverage of roads. This is due in part to augmented scenery effects accomplished by utilizing the Vector Map or VMAP0 which is a vector-based collection of geographical information about the Earth. Flight simulation games became more realistic for the private user, finally in the early 2000s.

You controlled the rudders by twisting the wings, and with cables attached to a harness around your hips, you had to lie on your stomach to reduce the drag. Especially since some of the early aircraft didn't even really have a cockpit, i am sure they would have seemed a bit imposing, looking at the inside of some of today's cockpits. Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh, the Wright brothers, this type of technology would boggle the minds of people like Elinor Smith.

Depending on whether you want to be a couch pilot or train for a career in aeronautics, flight simulator games are definitely exciting and useful. How things have changed, my! Now many crafts are controlled by computers to eliminate human error.