question about old real-time computer graphics used for militaryflight simulators

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parallax-scroll

Here we have a demo of a flight simulator system from Evans &
Sutherland circa 1981. The CT-5.

It was used in various flight simulators for helicopters and F-16:

http://design.osu.edu/carlson/history/tree/images/e-s-military.jpg
http://i28.tinypic.com/2r5asus.jpg




For those that understand the history of real-time computer graphics,
which companies like Evans & Sutherland and General Electric
Aerospace (later rolled into Martin Marietta / Lockheed Martin)
invented in the late 1960s & 1970s and refined in the 1980s and early
1990s, was this one, the CT-5, the most advanced, highest-end, in
terms of the complexity and quality of the graphics it could generate,
for its time ?

These graphics, being real-time interactive @ 60fps, not some pre-
rendered CGI movie, seemed more advanced than anything else of the
time (early 1980s).
was it?

I know, or believe, that texture-mapping was invented in the 1980s, I
think by General Electric Aerospace / Martin Marietta, however at the
time, 1981, only flat-shading combined with gouraud-shading was
available. It looks amazing in the video and screenshots I've
provided.

Also, looking at some of the flat-shaded polygon arcade games from
NAMCO and SEGA of the early 1990s, such as Virtua Racing, Virtua
Fighter, Cyber Sled,
Air Combat, generated by their System 21 and MODEL 1 arcade boards
respectively, which were state of the art for video games, far ahead
of what personal computers and game consoles could do, at the time,
and even sharper than the later PlayStation1 graphics of 1994 /
1995... The older 1981 E&S simulator seems to have, yet even better
graphics capabilities than the flat-shaded polygon arcade games of
10-12 years later.

Does anyone have any specific knowledge of Evans & Sutherland CT-5
simulator system, the processing hardware behind it ?
 

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