
Danny Cohen, Inventor of the First Flight Simulator, Dies at 81 - furcyd
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-institute/ieee-member-news/danny-cohen-inventor-of-the-first-flight-simulator-dies-at-81
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davidw
He died in August and there was a good thread about him back then:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20689675](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20689675)

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wbl
First computer flight simulator. Earlier devices such as
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_Trainer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_Trainer)
were used and mechanically based.

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fortran77
These non-computer machines were incredible, too.

I remember one at Grumman Aerospace. They had a model of the landing area that
looked like a giant model railroad set, but it was vertically mounted. There
was a camera mounted on rails that could do X, Y, and Z, motion that
corresponded to how the airplane was being piloted. The view from the camera
was what was shown in the cockpit monitor.

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mannykannot
The first Link trainers did not have any visual display. As everything is
harder to do on instruments than with a view, such simulators are very useful
for everything but initial training and advanced maneuvering (such as
aerobatics, combat, in-flight refuelling, and a lot of the things helicopters
are used for.)

