[bigiain]

Around the early/mid eighties, I got to play in a flight simulator for the new F1-11 avionics package Australia was buying (my dad ran the project building the sims).

It had a pair of Silicon Graphics Reality Engine IIs, one projecting a lower res image over the entire half-spherical screen, and the other driving a projector mounted on a gimbal that tracked the flight helmet - to display a high resolution image in the direct field of view of the pilot.

It was _possible_ if you tried, to "trick" the system so you could notice from the pilots seat what it was doing. But it was _remarkable_ the difference between sitting in the seat with the helmet on, and watching from behind where you could really obviously see the high res patch of sky moving around. Enemy planes turned from Space Invaders kind of pixel art into recognisable Russian fighter planes when the pilot looked at them. The "immersive reality" while flying the sim was amazing.