There was another interesting step between these kinds of simulators and modern ones with rendered graphics. For a while there used to be simulators with a TV screen mounted where the windscreen would be. It was hooked up to a small camera that would move over a plate with a miniature landscape on it. The camera would follow the motion of the simulator.<br>I used to work for a company that made flight simulators right after I left school and the older guys at the company told stories about this. One funny anecdote was how a spider got onto the landscape plate once and scared the pilot to death, looking like a 200m tall monster.,(reply>), The Apollo program used these for LEM landing training, I remember. I also heard a story that the engineers hated it when the astronauts crashed the simulator because the camera ended up ploughing into the landscape model and they had to fix it. No idea whether that's true.