SIMULATION IN AVIATION

Although some aircraft simulators were built between 1910 and 1927, none of them could provide the proper feel of the aircraft because they could not dynamically reproduce its behavior.^[2] In 1930, Edwin Link filed a patent for a pneumatically driven aircraft simulator. The "Link Trainer" was a standard for flight training before World War II, but the war accelerated its use and the further development of flight simulators. In the 1950s, electronic controls replaced pneumatic ones through analog, digital, and hybrid computers. The aircraft simulator achieved its modern form in the late 1960s, but it has been continuously refined. Aviation simulators are so realistic now that pilots with experience flying one aircraft are routinely certified to fly totally new or different aircraft, even if they have never flown the actual aircraft without passengers on board. Similar stories of the development of simulators can be told for a number of other industries.