A flight simulator is a device that artificially re-creates aircraft flight and various aspects of the flight environment. This includes the equations that govern how aircraft fly, how they react to applications of their controls and other aircraft systems, and how they react to external environmental factors such as air density, turbulence, cloud, precipitation, etc. Flight simulation is used for a variety of reasons, including flight training (mainly of pilots), the design and development of the aircraft itself, and research into aircraft characteristics and control handling qualities.
Depending on their purpose, flight simulations employ various types of hardware, modeling detail and realism. They can range from PC laptop-based models of aircraft systems to simple replica cockpits for familiarisation purposes to more complex cockpit simulations with some working controls and systems to highly detailed cockpit replications with all controls and aircraft systems and wide-field outside-world visual systems, all mounted on six degrees-of-freedom (DOF) motion platforms which move in response to pilot control movements and external aerodynamic factors.
Read more about Flight Simulator: Manufacturers, Instructor Operating Stations, Modern High-end Flight Simulators
Famous quotes containing the word flight:
“In all her products, Nature only develops her simplest germs. One would say that it was no great stretch of invention to create birds. The hawk which now takes his flight over the top of the wood was at first, perchance, only a leaf which fluttered in its aisles. From rustling leaves she came in the course of ages to the loftier flight and clear carol of the bird.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)