Flight Simulation Software

1 Design of an Engineering Flight Simulator

I have my hopes, and very distinct ones, too, of one day getting cerebral phenomena such that I can put them into mathematical equations.

Ada Lovelace

1.1 The Evolution of Flight Simulation

The Link Trainer is generally regarded as the forerunner of flight simulation. Ed Link had worked in his father’s factory in Binghamton, where they manufactured air-driven pianos and church organs. Having gained his pilot’s licence in the late 1920s, Link applied his knowledge of pneumatics to the construction of a flight trainer (Link, 1930), using compressed air to tilt and swivel the cockpit and to drive pressure gauges to replicate aircraft instruments. His invention was remarkable in several ways:

• It was the first time pilots could undertake instrument training in a synthetic device rather than an aeroplane.
• The flight trainer was based on pneumatics.
• The aircraft motion was based on an empirical model rather than a mathematical model.

Six Link Trainers were purchased by the US Army Flying Corps in the early 1930s, following several fatalities attributed to a lack of skill in instrument flying, establishing the benefits of a synthetic training device. The case for simulation was further reinforced during the Second World War with many allied pilots trained in instrument flying on the ‘Blue Box’, as the Link Trainer was affectionately known.

The limitation of the Link Trainer was that its model of aerodynamics and flight dynamics was based ...