Use of head mounted virtual reality displays in flight training simulation

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this thesis was to evaluate currently commercially available head mounted virtual reality displays for potential use in pilot training simulators. For this purpose acommercial simulator was modified to display the virtual environment in an Oculus RiftDK2 headset. A typical monitor based setup was used to provide a set of hardware requirements which the VR implementation had to meet or exceed to be considered potentially usable for pilot training simulators. User tests were then performed with a group of users representative of those normally using pilot training simulators, including both pilots and engineers working with simulator development. The main focus of the user tests was to evaluate some potential weaknesses found in the technical comparison (such as when a measured parameter was close to the lower limit defined by the monitor based setup) and to make a measurement of the usability of the VR implementation. The results from the technical comparison showed that the technical requirements were met and in most cases also exceeded. There were however some potential weaknesses revealed during the user tests, which included screen resolution and the field of view. There was one main critical deficiency found during the user tests. This was the lack of interaction with the aircraft as users were only able to interact with the flight stick and throttle lever. While this enabled the users to control many aspects of the aircraft (by using buttons and other controls fitted on the flight stick/throttle) in a training scenario a user also has to be able to interact with other switches and/or monitors in the cockpit. This was however a known limitation of the implementation and thus didn’t affect the tested parts of the simulator. The user tests also confirmed that the resolution was a potential problem, but that the overall usability was high. Thus the VR implementation had potential for use in a pilot training simulator, if the critical issues found during the user tests were solved.