Harry Lime may have said that during 500 years of peace and democracy all that the Swiss came up with was the cuckoo clock: but LOFT have gone one better.
I've spent more than a thousand hours in full-flight simulators mainly giving or else receiving instruction, and what this invention does is similar to what downloads did to the hardware required to reproduce music viz. practically eliminate it.
For what it does is to flag the instruments on the panel with a code like QR to mark up the broad layout, and then recreate the entire picture inside and outside of the flight deck using a VR headset.
The two things missing are the prior fidelity when it comes to (a) motion or (b) crew interaction, but frankly these will in time be missed no more than a road atlas when it comes to navigating a vehicle nowadays.
In truth to save on costs and maintenance I would operate conventional simulators with the motion off on occasion, and after a little while you would frankly not notice the difference.
As I was departing the industry hydraulic motion systems were being replaced with electrically-actuated devices with the same level of certification, and those savings that we see here will doubtless make such systems the norm in coming years. For if nothing else they suit an era of education or training that may pursued exclusively online, and as often as not at home.
The name LOFT I figured must be because this was a system that could be installed thereabouts, but it more likely relates to what aeroplanes do in carrying us aloft; or even from the fact that conventionally it stands for Line Oriented Flight Training.
Perhaps all three? Something maybe its renegade inventor, electrical engineer, ski-fanatic pilot would know...
The Protestant Reformation had roots in Switzerland, led in turn to Enlightenment thinking and thus scientific enquiry and technical development... rather more than the cuckoo clock quoted in the movie.
