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Fidelity of Simulation for Pilot Training

The training flight simulator is a device for the acquisition, development, and maintenance of flying
skills. Its use may give considerable savings in flying time, flying space, fuel consumption, and air-
craft life and also enable trainees to carry out operations which in the actual aircraft would be danger-
ous to life and machine. These advantages have been recognized, and flight simulation is now widely
established as a method for pilot training.

Unfortunately, simulators are tending to become as complex and expensive to acquire as the aircraft
for which they are surrogate. Serious questions have been raised, in both the technical and training
communities, as to the complexity of simulation that is required for effective pilot training. Accordingly,
AGARD established Working Group 10 in March 1978 and defined its primary objectives as follows:

1. To review the scope and effectiveness of current flight training in simulators

2. To review the status of technologies and human behavior important to the fidelity of flight simulation

To identify research objectives in the areas of simulation technologies and training that might
lead to increased cost-effectiveness in simulator training.

The Working Group evolved from a recognition by the AGARD Aerospace Medical Panel (AMP) and the Flight
Mechanics Panel (FMP) that a multidisciplinary approach was required in assessing simulation for training.
The FMP has capability to advise on the technical and engineering problems associated with fidelity of
flight simulation, but is not a suitable group to deal with psychological and physiological problems on
the subject. As a result, AGARD decided on a combined effort between AMP and FMP, with AMP being the lead
panel. The intention was that engineers, psychologists, and physiologists should operate as a team, rather
than independent contributors, in order to obtain optimal efficiency in future simulator designs.

The Working Group structure provided excellent and valuable cross-fertilization of ideas. Each of
the three subgroups identified a broad range of topics covered by the notion of "simulator fidelity for
pilot training," and when these topics were considered together, the Working Group found itself with a
problem of very large dimensions. The main achievement of this report is the articulation of these broad
concerns and the definition of more specific questions that must be addressed in further detail.