Navy VR Flight Simulator
by Richard P. Greenfield(Page 2)
Some of the most advanced work on improving fighter aircraft is in the area of adding more and better information to the Helmet Mounted Displays that are increasingly replacing the older Heads Up Displays (which are projected onto fighter cockpit canopies). Consider the example of a better thermal imaging system. First, it has to be made compatible with the existing systems on board the aircraft (the so-called "avionics suite"). It has to be human tested, and that means, before anything else, a few rounds in the Dynamic Flight Simulator to find out if the new system can be clearly distinguished by a fighter pilot at various levels of acceleration. And then it has to be integrated into the existing Helmet Display without dramatically changing or shifting the weight of the helmet. A helmet with an asymmetric weight can snap a pilot's neck or compress a spine in an emergency ejection.
Another example is the testing that is now being conducted on proposals for the next generation of fighter aircraft. One of the largest problems that the military faces is that aircraft capabilities have outpaced human abilities to fly them. Sitting upright, in the current configuration for fighter aircraft, every high G turn works against the normal hydrostatic pressure that keeps blood flowing to the upper body and head. Induce high enough G force and a pilot blacks out. There are no exceptions, only a range where the event will occur. But if a pilot is lying down at a 40-45 degree angle in what the Air Force and Navy call the Supinated Cabin Design, the ability to tolerate higher G forces increases. This configuration also offers protection against such newer threats as laser blinding devices.
However, the Supinated Cabin Design means that the pilot would also not be able to see directly out of the aircraft and thus all information would have to be conveyed in a Virtual or symbolic way. Barry S. Shender, a biomedical engineer at the Warminster facility explained "We had to check and see if flying could be done at all in a high performance aircraft from a supinated position." The Navy built a mock up of the cabin based on an Air Force design including aircraft controls for rudders, stick, flaps, speed brakes and trim and with a Virtual Display giving the pilot a 135 degree field of view. And then they tested a group of pilots on a syllabus of flight maneuvers including instrument landings and high-speed, high-G turns. They ran the tests twice, upright and spine to begin assembling the data on whether the Supinated Cabin design is feasible for the next generation fighters.
