I did some training in a 727 sim with the camera-on-a-map system back in the early '70s. There was a lake on the map...and in this lake was an aircraft carrier. Nice to see someone had a sense of humor.
Also did early instrument training in a Link C-8 trainer. It was a hissing, lurching device with a tracker on a desk as you describe for the D-4 but ours had a plastic table top which could be wiped clean after the tracker left its trail of red ink.
After that came a DEHMEL DC6 sim. Fixed base, no visual. Something like this: