Just curious as to what CFI's or other pilots may see or have ideas about the future with training aids. I understand the significance of flight simulators, but is there other things that may come or other ideas that you may have that could help train pilots in the future?

Even if it is an advancement for the simulator its self, what would that be? This question is based around technology, of course, and what may be able to help us be better pilots in the future.

I'm toying with the idea of writing a paper on this, I just wanted to see what ideas others have about this. I have never been in a simulator so I could not say what needs to be improved and what doesn't. Any input would be appreciated,

thanks.

The cost flight training is already very high for what most professional pilot jobs pay, and GA flight simulators can drive down the cost of primary training enough that more pilots can afford it. I forget the brand, but a company came out with a full motion Skyhawk sim recently, and devices like that will reduce the cost of flying per hour to half what it is now. In my opinion it should be possible to log all but the last ten percent or so of any basic flight ticket up to ATP in a GA sim as you do with any transport aircraft. Will it be quite as much fun? No, but I tend to think the training quality will be just as good if not better as Level D transport sims have shown to be the case in airline operations. Since the cost per hour is still somewhat feasible using real GA aircraft, and there is supposedly some value to training in a real VFR environment, perhaps ten percent of a given certificate should still be done a real machine until studies show otherwise.

If you want fodder for a topic paper you could explore how well the GA-VFR operating environment transfers to indoor sim training and come up with a way of quantifying it. It is a thesis that would touch on psychology of learning, safety, aviation training, statistics, costs, and probably several other fields. I am sure it could be done without much additional research but it might be weak in some ways since full motion VFR sims are not really the norm.