Graham Warwick/ATLANTA
LORAL HAS demonstrated a novel approach to deployable simulation, which would allow actual aircraft to be used for training in a virtual environment. Helmet-mounted cameras and displays are used to superimpose computer-generated outside-world scenes and instruments on to a video image of the cockpit.
The virtual-environment deployable simulator (VEDS) uses colour keying - the "blue-screen" technique used to display the background maps for television weather forecasts.
The cockpit windows, instrument faces and sensor displays are covered with differently coloured masks, which indicate to the system where to insert the appropriate computer-generated images into a view of the cockpit produced by the helmet-mounted cameras.
The merged camera-video and computer images are then projected in stereo on to the binocular helmet-mounted display. Head tracking ensures that the computer-generated images overlay the masked-off windows and instruments correctly, while the cameras ensure that the pilot can see everything else in the cockpit, including his own hands obscuring a display.
Loral says that the VEDS could be plugged into an aircraft on the ramp and used to stimulate the onboard systems so that the aircraft itself could be used for simulation training, either independently, or networked to other simulators.
Source: Flight International
