Exhibition's description

At the Museum’s entrance hall, a motion based flight simulator allows visitors to fly on board an airplane of the pioneering period: the Caproni Ca.9.

In the main exhibition room of the Museum, the Stereoscopic Table, used by Alenia Aeronautica for various activities in support to aircraft’s system design, development and test and for pilots training, permits to see in 3 dimensions the manoeuvres of the Eurofighter Typhoon, derived from sessions carried out by pilots onboard simulators or from flight tests.

 

To the origins of flight simulation

The oldest news regarding equipments for flight simulation date back in the early ‘10, just a few years after the first engine powered flights. The purpose of the two simulator object of the exhibition was the test of pilots attitude for flying and, in particular, the test of their physiological reactions to stress induced by flying. In fact, an important chapter of the history of flight simulation has been written in Italy, in Turin, where the Military School of Venaria Reale, starting from 1915, began to make use of devices, designed and realized at the University of Turin for these purposes. The exhibition exposes to the public, for the first time since their restorations, the two oldest original flight simulators so far known. Alongside these rare finds, vintage scientific instrumentation, which allowed the recording of physiological parameters of the candidates to be tested for flight simulation.

The historical section ends with a third simulator, the Link Trainer, also known with the nickname "Blue Box" because of the colour of its fuselage, which has been produced in the US and dates back to the ‘40.

The simulation of free flight

The hands-on part of the exhibition starts with exhibits dedicated to free flight, the first of them permitting the public to simulate how to fly on a hang-glider.

PC workstations, equipped with joystick and rudder pedals, freely available to visitors, propose the most widely used software for soaring simulator, to bring the public a sport particularly fascinating and widespread on the local territory.

 

The best flight simulators for PC

The development of flight simulation software allowed, in recent years, to make available to general public - not only to professionals - a dynamic model of reality that can reproduce both the behaviour of the aircraft on which the simulation test takes place and the scenario of flight, rebuilt on a global scale and with a very high degree of likelihood. The PC workstations, equipped with flight sim yoke and rudder pedals, permit the visitors to experience the best software for flight simulation.

Beside consumer workstations, there is also an exhibit usually reserved to pilots training in flying schools. Thanks to a perfect reproduction of the control panel of a Cessna 172, everyone can experience how it feels to seat in front of a real cockpit. Around this control panel, a simplified replica of the flight deck of a famous two-seat flight training aircraft has been constructed. Operating aircraft’s commands – completely faithful reproduced and working! – give the visitors the opportunity to train to become a pilot as in real life…

 

The simulation of space flight

A dedicate PC provides the public inputs and suggestions of the flight in space, while in the Digital Planetarium "Columbia" some movies projected will retrace some steps of the most important recent space missions. On board the Gyrobic, visitors will experience the loss of the perception of the direction overhead-beneath as in space missions under conditions of microgravity.

In flight between playing and learning

Since the concept of simulation is also linked to the dimension of playing and entertainment, alongside the exhibition there are a few more installations – placed in strategic areas of the Museum – dedicated to kids. In front of one of the most valuable and famous airplane of the collections of the Museum – the Savoia Marchetti 79 – a coloured wooden plane, the I-MINI, unveils the secrets of flight, explaining the movements of ailerons, elevators and rudder, inviting the kids to try them on board it! Moreover, a soft corner of the main exposition room will welcome younger visitors and their parents offering them an evocative collection of images, taken from a wide range of cartoons, concerning the theme of flight. A similar installation, located in the reproduction of an old laboratory for the construction of wooden propellers, proposes through the form of "video-essay" a series of images from famous films of all time, illustrating the history of aeronautics as seen through Cinema’s eye.