ATN I disagree. The most important thing is accurate replication of the behaviour of the helicopter and all its systems, in all its normal and abnormal modes.
Good visuals are helpful, and whilst the limited distance to the projector dome causes parallax, in practice the human brain quickly adapts (quickly, as in a couple of minutes). Good field of view is important, but resolution really isn't. Of course, when flying IMC the visuals are useless!
Motion is mostly useful for the minor cues from turbulence, undercarriage ground contact, translational lift etc. Motion will always be limited, and it really isn't worth spending a lot of money to have a lot of motion travel - the money is better spent elsewhere.
In fact I would say that motion's primary purpose is to help reduce motion sickness. Sounds like a contradiction but with a wide field of view, visual cueing is very powerful and the brain doesn't like it if there is no motion cueing to go with the visual cues.
It must be remembered that we are not trying to teach people to fly with these sims. Hopefully they can already fly, and what we are trying to teach are the particular features of the type. Therefore realism in visual flying is not that important.
Last edited by HeliComparator; 9th Nov 2013 at 23:48.