Simulator ride

Simulator rides are a type of amusement park or fairground ride, where the audience is shown a movie while their seats move to correspond to the action on screen.

There are many types but they fall into the heading of entertainment unlike the ones used for training. Simulator rides work by showing a film and moving at the same time. This information is fixed and cannot be changed without rewriting the ride's firmware. A film or experience can be made of any subject as they are created manually. A film of any given subject is given to the manufacturer who records movement to go with a film, you then end up with a video source and a movement disk, this can be preloaded onto a computer or manually set up using a floppy disk so when the film and disk are placed in the system it is controlled by a computer and a controller to make the film start at the same time as the motion.

Until recently, constructing simulator rides was an expensive, high tech business. The first simulators were built to train military pilots. Long before the days of virtual reality, the view through the cockpit came from remote video cameras which moved on gantries above physical model landscapes. These model landscapes were huge, often the size of aircraft hangars. By the mid-1990s, computer virtual reality graphics replaced most physical models in simulators. Today's flight training simulators, like NASA’s, have virtual landscapes projected on multiple screens giving a 180 degree view. Much simpler simulators, running fixed video synchronised to the movement of the 'cabin', were introduced in funfairs in the same period. They seat about 12 people and require an operator.

Universal Studios originally invented the motion theater with their attraction The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera. Disney uses a similar plan and opened their Star Tours attraction in 1987. Universal's attraction did not open until 1990. This first ride was soon followed by the Back to the Future-themed Back to the Future: The Ride, which opened in 1991 at Universal Studios Florida and was removed in 2007 to make way for The Simpsons Ride.

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