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Fixed-wing or rotary, powered in a glider, flight can be dangerous for a beginner. The laws of gravity always apply, often with catastrophic results. This was realised very early in the pioneering days of flight, and even back then, basic simulators were invented so that new pilots could get used to the controls of the plane before they actually to the air. One of these early simulators, the Sanders Teacher, consisted of a complete aircraft mounted on a universal joint and facing into the wind, able to rotate and tilt freely. Another pre-World War One flight simulator was built using a section of a barrel mounted on a hoop.
World War One saw the aeroplane used for war and led to a great demand for trained pilots for the new fighter aircraft. Stimulated by this, training programmes produced a number of electro-mechanical devices, and these continued to be developed and improved in the inter-war years. The best-known of these was the Link Trainer, invented by the American Edwin Link and made commercially available in 1929. Link used is background as an organ-maker to create a machine with a pneumatic motion platform driven by bellows. This platform had a replica cockpit containing the most common instruments and controls and was able to simulate pitch, roll and yaw. The Link Trainer was ideal for learning the vital task of instrument flying (flying in cloudy or low-visibility conditions) where the consequences of error were less fatal (a joke circulating even today in pilot circles states that large lumps of rock, aka mountains, still come out better off in a collision with aircraft even when covered with white fluffy stuff). While the Link Trainer was initially ignored as superfluous by the aviation world, the Air Mail Scandal in the early 1930s, where twelve pilots were killed in three months during low-visibility flying, drove the US Army Air Force to purchase four Link Trainers.
After this, there was no looking back. Flight simulators were now an important part of pilot training. And World War Two saw around 10,000 Link Trainers were used in the 1939-45 war to train new pilots in the USAF, the RAF and the air forces of other allied nations. These "Blue Boxes" were still in use by several Air Forces into the 1960s and early 1970s.
Another notable flight simulator was the World WarTwo Celestial Navigation Trainer. Introduced in1941, this was a massive structure 13.7 m (45 ft) high. This simulator was designed to fit a complete bomber crew so they could learn how to fly night missions.
The nascent computer world of the 1940s put analog computers to use in solving the equations of flight (e.g. lift, drag, maximum payload, etc). These could easily be called the first electronic simulators.
Flight simulators continued to be developed, having proven their usefulness in wartime. Civilian aviation companies made use of simulators, and in 1948, Pan-American became the first airline to own a complete simulator - the Stratocruiser trainer built by Curtiss-Wright. While this simulator had no motion modelling or visual display, it did have a complete cockpit replica with fully working instruments, and it was found to be a very effective trainer.
Motion was added in the 1950s by a simulator developed by General Precision, Inc (later part of Singer Corporation). This flight simulator comprised a replica cockpit inside a metal framework. This first motion model could simulate yaw, roll and pitch three degrees, but within ten years, this range was extended to ten degrees and the types of motion included not only pitch, roll and yaw but also surge, heave and sway.
Visual modelling was also developed in this period. These early visual systems used a technique that would be familiar to the movie-making world. These systems used a miniature model of the terrain and a camera was "flown" over the model terrain. The resulting picture was displayed to the pilot, who could control the camera as he (pilots in these days were usually male) would control an aircraft. The display changed in response to these controls. These displays were limited only to the areas that could be modelled, and these were usually the area surrounding an airport, though military simulators had mock-ups of typical terrain or targets. The use of digital computers for flight simulation began in the 1960s.
The space race and the rapidly developing computer industry saw both the visual and the motion aspects of flight simulators being improved. In 1972, Singer developed a collimating lens apparatus, using a parabolic mirror and beamsplitter, which projected Out of The cockpit Window (OTW) views to the pilot at a distant focus. These collimated monitors made the simulators much more realistic, but each monitor only offered a field of view of 28 degrees and several were needed for a realistic field of view. In 1976 wider angle collimated monitors were introduced. And in 1977, airline simulators began adopting the "cab" configuration where computers are placed in the cockpit area (rather than being located in racks off the simulator). The equipment is accessible via a wraparound catwalk when the simulator is not in motion. Shortly afterwards, in 1982, the Wide-angle Infinity Display Equipment (WIDE) visual display system was introduced. This allowed seamless distant-focus viewing for the pilot and the co-pilot in a simulator. WIDE displays are now universally used in full flight simulators where two pilots are seated side by side.
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