Looking at the flight envelope, transport aircraft normally operate at low angular rates within ± 30 degrees angle of bank, pitch attitudes of 5–15 degrees nose up, and without significant G-loads. Courtesy: 2016 National Aerospace Centre (NLR), Amsterdam, The Netherlands.įull-flight simulators are widely used for recurrent training and proficiency checks of airline pilots, and are even qualified for the entire conversion training to a new aircraft (“type rating”), which proves that today's simulator technology offers good operational fidelity for transport aircraft.
The Generic Research Aircraft Cockpit Environment, representative of a hexapod-type full flight simulator. This technique, known as “tilt coordination,” makes use of the perceptual ambiguity between body tilt and translation, and shows that the limited motion space of a simulator can sometimes be surpassed when knowledge of human motion perception is taken into account.įig. Also, a commonly applied technique to produce a sensation of forward acceleration during takeoff is to tilt the simulator cabin backward ( Groen and Bles, 2004). In addition to these motion cues representing “maneuver motion,” certification also requires the generation of some special motion effects to simulate “disturbance motion” (e.g., tail strikes, engine failure, turbulence).
This way, only transient, or “onset cues” are being reproduced, which are associated with changes in aircraft motion (e.g., pitching up, or rolling into a turn). Motion-driving algorithms in the simulator's software convert the equations of aircraft motion into platform motions, filtering out large displacements, which would drive the platform into its limits and cause noticeable false cues ( Nahon and Reid, 1990).
The commonly used motion platform consists of six linear actuators (hence the name “hexapod”), which move synergistically to produce angular excursions up to ± 30 degrees, and linear displacements of about 6.5 ft/2 m ( Fig. The most advanced full-flight simulator approved for pilot training is classified as Level D by the FAA (2007) (or Type VII by ICAO (2015)), and requires a six degrees-of-freedom motion platform.
These range from fixed-base procedure trainers, comprising a generic cockpit, to full-flight simulators, comprising a type-specific cockpit operating on a motion platform to give the pilot the “feel” of flying. Depending on the training objectives, different categories of flight simulators are approved for commercial pilot training.
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