Paul Phillips sells some of the best toys in the world.

At four-and-a-half metres long and two metres high, the Morphis simulator is a little big for most playrooms.

The price tag of £160,000 puts it beyond the normal budget.

But children, big and small, cannot resist it, including most visitors to Camber Entertainment's Crawley headquarters.

Three massive hydraulic pumps buck the futuristic-looking module back and forth while a two-metre screen inside plays videos from the cockpits of wild rollercoasters and display aircraft.

It is as near as most passengers will get to flying with the Blue Angel's jet display team or enjoying a theme park ride in outer space.

Mr Phillips, Camber's sales manager, insists he does not spend his working days sat on the rides.

After a career in the leisure industry, he is hardened to these things.

Camber has just signed a deal to create a simulation of the International Space Station with the help of NASA astronaut David Scott.

The station itself is to be built over the next five years and will be the one of the brightest objects in the night sky when it is completed.

The simulation is a major project for Camber.

British graphic designer Ben Smith will create the 'ridefilm' - what passengers see on the screen - and Camber will set up its Morphis unit to suit the action.

Once the film is created, a Camber engineer will programme the simulator to rise and sway according to what happens on the screen.

The first Space Station Simulator will be installed this September at Calgary International Airport in Canada.

This Sussex simulation company is on a roll.

Camber is creating the first public simulation of a flight in Eurofighter.

A specially designed lorry will tour Europe giving members of the public the chance to become Top Gun for a few minutes.

The U.S. Navy has ordered a unit on a similar trailer to encourage new recruits.

It is payback time for a company which spent the first nine months after its foundation in 1996 designing a range of simulators from a blank sheet of paper.

Steve Spence, a former employee of Crawley simulator firm Thompson, drafted in Steve Harper, a designer for Rolls Royce and Rover, to create the futuristic body shell.

Mr Phillips said: "This is the most modern-looking capsule in the industry."

So far 120 Morphis machines have been sold worldwide.

Museums are ordering eight-person versions of the Morphis and running educational films.

These take the viewer swooping past the moon landing, flying through a World War One dogfight and splashing through the waves with Columbus in just a few minutes.

America's greatest museum, the Smithsonian, has four of the machines.

The technology used to kid your senses is not remarkably advanced.

The films themselves arrive on CD Roms as MPEG files, a format often used in a smaller form on the internet.

The computer which runs the films has a lowly 150MHZ Pentium Processor and just 8MB of RAM. You could pick up something similar in PC World for less than £500.

Mr Phillips said: "It all uses simple technology.

"It's the combination of technologies and being able to control motion and visuals that matters."

This combination becomes more potent as the machines get bigger.

The company's Stargazer Motion Theater can pitch audiences of more than 100 in six different direction as they watch films on giant screens.

A clutch of companies are creating virtual flight within easy earshot of the real thing at Gatwick.

Thompson Training and Simulation is joined by the simulation division of CAE Electronics at Burgess Hill and Intersim in Littlehampton.

SEOS Displays in Burgess Hill runs a healthy business supplying screens to many military and civil simulation projects.

Mr Phillips said new businesses in a certain industry tend to spring up when key personnel leave established firms.

It is a remarkable cluster of technology firms all working in an exclusive industry.

It means Sussex is home to some of the most skilled workers in the country.