This paper presents and analyses the research front on development methodologies that can be applied to flight simulations for development purposes. This field includes any flight simulator used during the development phase of an aircraft, when flight test or other validation data is still scarce. A review of the literature published between 1999-2019 is performed. As flight-specific literature on the topic is limited, a broader view on flight simulators is adopted. Simulators are regarded as risk-averse scientific software; that is, software created to understand a phenomenon and whose primary goal is to be correct. This perspective highlights the lack of suitable established software development methodologies (SwDev) for this software type. Two solutions to this problem have been identified: one treating scientific SwDev as a knowledge acquisition process, and another one treating it as development of enabling systems, following the established product development processes. These solutions need to be completed with methodologies to deal with the multidisciplinarity of the flight simulation problem, such as model exchange standards or workflows for multidisciplinary collaboration.