This 1970s Tank Simulator Used Miniature Villages And Cameras For Better Training

While by the late 1970s, computer game consoles like the Atari 2600 had already been invented, the technology and visual fidelity of the software and hardware were incredibly limited. These limitations posed a serious roadblock to militaries worldwide, as live training added cost and time — especially in the case of military tank training — as heavily armored vehicles are incredibly expensive to upkeep and fuel. The lack of training alternatives led France to seek a low-cost, low-risk option for live tank training. This goal led to an inventive concept that could replicate the conditions of live training without needing to field actual tanks. 

Enter the analog tank simulator, the Panzer 68 Driving Simulator (FASIP). This inventive device would use a small camera and robotic arm alongside a miniature replica town to simulate tank operations and could all take place within an indoor training room's risk-free confines. 

Ultimately, the FASIP simulator was used in tank training operations at the Mechanized Training Center (MAZ) in Thun, Switzerland, until 2004, when a lack of legacy electronic parts finally led the device to be retired. While different from modern digital training simulations in various ways, the concept was similar and helped the Swiss army quickly train tank operators for real combat scenarios.

The main components of the FASIP tank simulator include a large green steel cab that simulates the driver's cab inside the tank hull. Hydraulics power movement in the box and replicate the interior of a tank. The trainee sits inside this mock hull and can see a viewscreen of what appears to be a European town that's, in reality, a camera operated by a mechanical arm that's moving through a miniature replica.

The miniature is around 12 meters long and is a highly-detailed terrain model. As the operator inside the cab steers and drives the tank, the robotic trolley and camera move, transmitting the images back to the viewscreen in the cockpit. 

Now located in the Swiss Military Museum in Full, Switzerland, the museum curators had to rebuild the original 1970s machinery, replacing the chips with Raspberry Pi, a low-cost computer chip that's easy to utilize with widely-used coding languages like Scratch and Python.

While many parts, including the camera, arm, and miniature model, use original parts, much of the internal computer system was swapped for more obtainable modern computer parts. Work on the FASIP tank simulator completed development in July 2020. In total, throughout the history of the machine, there have been 12 different models created for different kinds of tanks, with the Panzer 68 being the last remaining working model for that variation of tank. 

The usefulness of the Panzer 68 FASIP can't be understated, as it prepared thousands of tank operators to use their skills in real-life combat scenarios. The key lies within the sensitivity of the hydraulics. Using a metal sled, the robotic trolley slides with the operator's every action, which is then transmitted to the mock cab and initiates the hydraulics, which are adjusted depending on the terrain type. The pitch is sensitive to even the slightest movements in the metal sled. In this way, trainees can feel the differences between different types of roads, like paved streets, gravel, or other scenarios like wooden logs.

While the fidelity within the viewport of the cab may not be the most accurate scenes compared to HD military war games today, it's important to remember that since the early 1900s, miniatures have been used to create realistic scenes in film and continued to be the main method to create eye-stunning visual effects until fairly recently with the invention of CGI. 

These miniature visuals and the highly inventive concept for the FASIP tank simulator made it such an effective training tool. Today, visitors of the Swiss Military Museum in Full, Switzerland, can try the Panzer 68 FASIP tank simulator themselves to get a taste of what it might feel like to operate an actual Panzer 68 tank.