Simulators stories

The six-man crew of volunteer astronauts who joined the Mars500 mission to isolate themselves in a bus-sized simulator for 520 days to simulate a journey to Mars are returning back to "Earth." Technically, they never left Earth, so they're just opening the door to their bunker for the first time in over nearly a year and a half.
After more than 250 long days in a wood-paneled approximation of a spaceship headed toward the Red Planet, the six-man crew of Mars500 has finally reached their goal: touching down on Mars. Even though this "Mars" is really just a sandbox in a suburb, one team member still saw the sight as inspiring.
It sounds crazy, but 233 days ago a team of six scientists entered a sealed simulator in Russia. Their mission? Recreate the conditions of a 520-day round trip to and from Mars, realistically cutoff from the rest of the world. Come February they'll finally reach the Red Planet, but the hardest part of the journey will still be ahead.
Say, you know what I bet a giant, robotic arm would be pretty good at? Shaking someone around who is playing an arcade game so they feel like they're really moving. Apparently, Paolo Robuffo Giordano and his peers at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics agree, and that's exactly what they did.