Simulators turn visitors to the Portugal Air Summit – Observer into ‘pilots’
An aviation simulator with real maps or another one with virtual reality glasses technology have been ‘unleashing’ the adrenaline of visitors to the Portugal Air Summit, in Ponte de Sor (Portalegre), in recent days.
Ponte de Sor aerodrome is the stage for the “Portugal Air Summit” from Wednesday
In this ‘flight’ by the largest aeronautical summit in the Iberian Peninsula, several visitors tapped to feel the emotions of a flight simulator created by the Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal (IPS) and by the Armed Forces and which is used for training purposes.
Supported by real maps, the simulator makes everyone’s experience very realistic. those who use the equipment, making them ‘fly’ over cities and always with an important guarantee.
“It can experience an approach to the control of an airplane”, but “with a guarantee that it doesn’t crash. And don’t get hurt”, tells the Lusa news agency, jokingly, Helder Amaral, 20, an IPS student.
The same student of the 3rd year of the Mechanical Engineering course, in the field of Aeronautics, explains that, by ‘piloting’ a machine, whose structure was entirely designed at the polytechnic institute, the most adventurous can imagine ‘tearing the skies’ ‘.
“It’s like being in the ‘cockpit’ of an airplane. You can understand how an aircraft works, how it manages to control as closely as possible ”, reports.
Available in one of the pavilions of the aeronautical summit Portugal Air Summit, which is taking place from Wednesday to Sunday at the municipal aerodrome of that municipality, the simulator was sought after by many, younger or older.
“Many people are already coming to test, from young people to adults, and everyone is impressed with the quality and resource of the simulator”, preventing Hélder Amaral.
In addition to training military pilots, the prototype was developed with a pedagogical purpose, as it is used in classes.
To those who pass by the ‘stand’, Hélder and colleagues explain that they use a machine in their course, to test “how airplanes work”.
The Portuguese Air Force is also present at the event with a simulator that it offers to visitors an in-flight combat experience using virtual reality goggles.
“I had already tried virtual reality, but never anything like this. It’s interesting and you can get a sense of what it’s like to fly and learn a bit about airplanes”, tells Lusa Nuno Bairrão, 23, a mechanical engineer at a Portuguese company in the aerospace area.
The experience was “very real”, because he enjoyed that he was actually ‘flying’, at times even “very close to the sea”, adds Nuno, pleased to have ‘shot down’ some “five or six” enemy planes.
“Really enjoyed. Through virtual reality and the simulator, things look life-size and we have a sense of the world around us, which is impossible on a computer”, he points out.
In addition to the simulators, the summit offers other fun moments, such as the possibility of accessing the ‘cockpit’ of a real F-16 military fighter.
Adelina Fernandes was one of the lucky ones who sat on the aircraft: “I doubt that I will ever have the opportunity to get on a plane like this again, and if it wasn’t for this event, I would probably never get on one”, he admits, in a statement to Lusa.