Was Evans & Sutherland CT5 really created in 1981? A few days ago I found a video on Twitter showing the Evans &amp; Sutherland CT5 Flight Simulator system. It was labeled as 1981 footage and looked really amazing. The first time I saw similar 3D grahics in computer games was in the late 90s and in ealy 2000s. I wasn't suspisous because it was described as a product made for the military and I thought it's normal the technology to be more advanced.

Yesterday I showed the video to my colleagues, all of them experienced developers and computer gurus, and they said it's impossible such graphics to be achieved in the 80's. I tried to search for a proof but I found none except a short documentary on YouTube and some forum topics where people were discussing how it was achieved without mentioning anything about the exact year. I found no definitive proof that the year of creation of CT5 system was 1981. No product specifications, no publications in wellknown newspapers and not even a Wikipedia article. I'm amazed how little information is out there about something so astonishing. And this is one of the things that fuel the doubt of my colleagues.

Was Evans &amp; Sutherland CT5 really created in 1981 or at least from the same decade?

My colleagues are with a high self esteem and it's hard to change their opinion on something. I'll appreciate any resource that proves or disproves the existance of such advanced graphics in the early 80s as well as some details how it was made.

In the link below you can see the two parts of the documentary I mentioned earlier and a short forum discussion about the CT5 and similar technologies. My colleagues don't consider it a sufficient proof.

CT5 Evans Sutherland Simulator - How did it work?
The CT5 was designed before 1981. I started working at E&amp;S in May 1981. The CT5 was fully designed by then and 3 had been built. All 3 were still at E&amp;S and hadn't shipped yet when I started. Two of them were on the test floor and the third was the engineering prototype that was later sold. The prototype was in the "snake room", so called because of all the black power cords hanging from the ceiling. I also remember seeing the prototype in the snake room when I made a recruiting visit to E&amp;S in early January 1981. So, the prototype, at least, was up and running before 1981.

The first two CT5 systems were CH-46 helicopter simulators and the first one went to Cherry Point NAS. I don't think it shipped in 1981 as I remember it being there on the test floor for about a year after I joined the company. So, it probably shipped in 1982. As I recall, the two systems built after the CH-46 systems were AV8B Harrier jet simulators.