# Flight Simulator A flight simulator is a machine that gives pilots the experience of flying an aircraft without having to leave the ground. It is a type of [Virtual Reality](Virtual%20Reality.md). Such a machine (or more precisely, the computer that controls it) can be programmed with the characteristics of a real or imaginary aircraft. The aircraft’s environment, such as the weather and the layout of airports, can also be specified in the program. As the pilot practices flying from one airport to another, the simulator causes the appropriate images to appear at the windows, the appropriate jolts and accelerations to be felt, the corresponding readings to be shown on the instruments, and so on. It can incorporate the effects of, for example, turbulence, mechanical failure and proposed modifications to the aircraft. Thus a flight simulator can give the user a wide range of piloting experiences, including some that no real aircraft could: the simulated aircraft could have performance characteristics that violate the laws of physics: it could, for instance, fly through mountains, faster than light or without fuel. ## Even a Flight Simulator Kicks Back What would happen if the pilot of a flight simulator tried to use [Dr Johnsons Criteria](Dr%20Johnsons%20Criteria.md)? Although the simulated aircraft and its surroundings do not really exist, they do ‘kick back’ at the pilot just as they would if they did exist. The pilot can open the throttle and hear the engines roar in response, and feel their thrust through the seat, and see them through the window, vibrating and blasting out hot gas, in spite of the fact that there are no engines there at all. The pilot may experience flying the aircraft through a storm, and hear the thunder and see the rain driving against the windscreen, though none of those things is there in reality. What is outside the cockpit in reality is just a computer, some hydraulic jacks, television screens and loudspeakers, and a perfectly dry and stationary room. Does this invalidate Dr Johnson's [Refutation of Solipsism](Dr%20Johnsons%20Criteria.md#Refutation%20of%20Solipsism)? No. His conversation with Boswell could just as well have taken place inside a flight simulator. ‘I refute it thus’, he might have said, opening the throttle and feeling the simulated engine kick back. There is no engine there. What kicks back is ultimately a computer, running a program that calculates what an engine would do if it were ‘kicked’. But those calculations, which are external to Dr Johnson’s mind, respond to the throttle control in the same complex and autonomous way as the engine would. Therefore they pass the test for reality, and rightly so, for in fact these calculations are physical processes within the computer, and the computer is an ordinary physical object — no less so than an engine — and perfectly real. The fact that it is not a real engine is irrelevant to the argument against solipsism. After all, not everything that is real has to be easy to identify. It would not have mattered, in Dr Johnson’s original demonstration, if what seemed to be a rock had later turned out to be an animal with a rock-like camouflage, or a [Holographic Projection Disguising a Garden Gnome](Holographic%20Projection%20Disguising%20a%20Garden%20Gnome.md). So long as its response was complex and autonomous, Dr Johnson would have been right to conclude that it was caused by something real, outside himself, and therefore that reality did not consist of himself alone. --- Date: 20241211 Links to: [5 - Virtual Reality](5%20-%20Virtual%20Reality.md) Tags: References: * []()