In the flight simulation industry today, computer industry standards and open systems architecture are dramatically influencing computer system selection, hardware/software design, and applications software development. What is an "open" systems simulator design? While open systems design has often been defined to mean the selection of a particular operating system and/or computer language for a host computer, it actually encompasses much more. A true open systems design impacts both hardware and software across all the systems and components that constitute a simulator.

Industry standards are offering very enticing promises of lower systems cost and complete portability of code. Yet how genuine are these promises and will flight simulation manufacturers and end-users truly benefit from a design that fully embraces open systems and industry standards? Beyond delivery, how will open systems and industry standards affect the logistical support of future simulators and training devices?

This paper will explore these issues and provide some answers to these questions. It reports of and draws upon the recent experiences of the Simulator Systems Division of FlightSafety International during their development of a completely portable simulator design. This design effort utilized industry standards to produce a flight simulator that is portable across multiple host computer platforms. The design effort involved months of development work on three different computer platforms (a Concurrent 8000, a Harris Night Hawk 4000, and an IBM RS/6000â„¢). Far from a trade study, the design effort culminates this year with the delivery of a simulator to a FlightSafety customer.

Both the benefits and consequences of a standards-based design will be discussed based on the lessons learned in this effort. In addition, the trends in industry standards will be evaluated to predict their effect on future simulation development efforts.