University of Illinois Willard Airport (KCMI) is a medium sized regional airport south of Savoy in Champaign County, Illinois, United States. It is owned and operated by the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign and is named for former University of Illinois president Arthur Cutts Willard.
This airport played a significant role in the birth of Flight Simulator as we know it today as in 1976, Bruce Artwick, who was a student at the University of Illinois, wrote a thesis on computer flig... University of Illinois Willard Airport (KCMI) is a medium sized regional airport south of Savoy in Champaign County, Illinois, United States. It is owned and operated by the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign and is named for former University of Illinois president Arthur Cutts Willard.
This airport played a significant role in the birth of Flight Simulator as we know it today as in 1976, Bruce Artwick, who was a student at the University of Illinois, wrote a thesis on computer flight simulation. He commercialised his ideas the next year and started writing a program called SubLogic Flight Simulator. He took flight lessons from Willard Airport to better understand the dynamics of flight and that is why Willard airport was the default start location for the program and all the flight lessons included in the package. This program was ported to the PC and became Microsoft Flight Simulator V1. 0 in 1982 and the rest is history.