Since World War II, the U.S. Army has considerably expanded its use of the helicopter in a variety of military functions. As new missions were defined, new tactics, extended performance requirements and increased number of subsystems have imposed extreme demands on the pilot. Ground-based flight simulation is the only safe practical way to investigate the tradeoffs between a better-trained pilot and a more complex aircraft. In 1975, a joint U.S. Army and NASA study was performed to establish the future needs for the simulation of rotary-wing aircraft. As a result, a program was initiated to develop a facility that could be used by government and industry in research and development. That facility is being developed jointly by the U.S. Army and NASA at the Ames Research Center.

In 1978 the Franklin Research Center completed the development of the concept for the motion generator to satisfy the requirements of the new simulation facility. In 1979 they began the design of the unit which is to be installed at the Ames Research Center in 1982. The Rotorcraft Simulator Motion Generator (RSMG) is a new four-degree-of-freedom system to replace the synergistic motion system presently mounted on the Vertical Motion Simulator at Ames. Its extended capabilities will satisfy the requirements for research involving both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft. In this way the Army/NASA goals for an advanced facility for rotorcraft simulation are to be satisfied most efficiently.