A Modern Simulator Circa 1930-1960, ish.
Outside a Modern modern Simulator.
Outside a typical Simulator.
At the left of the picture, the rounded section at the front of the simulator is the visual mirror, which wraps round the cockpit 180 Deg giving the Pilot, and Co-pilot a unobscured view all around. The mirror is not glass, but made from a reflective plastic film, held in shape by a vacuum. The image itself is projected on to a back projection screen above the pilots head, by the 5 projectors which can just be seen on the roof of the simulator, so the pilot is actually looking at a reflection of the image, which because of the geometry seems to be at infinity, ie. it does not look as though it is only a reflection of a picture on a screen just a few feet away.
And another one.
This gives more of a feel for its size.
The view from an A340 simulator.
Showing the view from the cockpit of the runway at dusk. Just below the window is the Auto Pilot control panel and below that from left to right is the Pilots Electronic Artificial Horizon, then his Direction Indicator, with map display, then the standby instruments. The two displays in the middle are the engine, and electronic warning displays, which is currently set to show the view from the external taxii cameras, then further left the landing gear lever and indicators, and finally the Co-pilots displays, which are repeats of the Pilots except the map display is set to arc mode.
A320 Cockpit, lit up a bit better.
The small side sticks which you can see on the left and right are how the Pilot, or Co-pilot flies the aircraft manually. In the middle of the picture you can see the throttles, on either side of the throttles are the Flight Management Computer displays, into which the pilot programs his route for the aircraft to fly, using the auto pilot, back from there are the communications panels, behind them, the flap lever, and speed brake, and behind them other miscellaneous panels. On the overhead panel which cannot be seen very well, are things like electrical power, hydraulics, fuel, airconditioning, pressurisation, fire indication and extinguishing, and inertial navigation panel etc.
B757 Landing at dusk at Hong Kong.
This picture gives a very good impression of how good the wrap round visual looks, as you can see there is a complete panaramic view out the window, including the side windows.
B767.
From this image you can probably see how similar a 767 and 757 are, from the pilots point of view, which makes it very easy to alternate between flying the two aircraft.
B747-400 Simulator.
The updated version of the 747, with an all electronic disply cockpit.
MD90 Simulator.
Manufactured by McDonald Douglas, who are now owned by Boeing.
Inside the Concord simulator.
B777 Simulator Cockpit.
Out the window you can see an aircraft in a near miss situation. By this stage the TCAS (Traffic & Collision Avoidence System) would be shouting very loud at the pilot. There are other visual indications on the displays, but at this size, you cannot realy see them.
B737, with the runway in the distance.
A340 FTD, full simulation using flat touch screen LCDs.
This is a Flight Training Device. It uses the same simulation code as the full flight simulator, except that all the aircraft displays and panels are images on flat touch screen LCD displays, in all respects it is fully functional, apart from pedals.
F16, with escort.
This is an example of a military fast jet trainer inside a sphere visual system. The cockpit only has very limited movement, supplemented by the pilot wearing a ‘G’ suit. The Image is projected onto the surrounding sphere wall which is specially coated, giving the pilot a very wide field of view, both horizontally and vertically. Some sophisticated systems even track the pilots’ line of sight, and put much more detail in his field of view to enhance the impression of reality even further.
Source: ntlworld
