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computer-generated virtual reality
training uk eire ireland
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Simulation
| Training | Aerospace
| Design
The line of development leading to current computer-generated virtual reality work started out during the second world war in a crude form, based on the need to train large numbers of pilots quickly and efficiently. When you want to train somebody to fly a plane you first give them many books and classroom instructions. That is useful up to a point, but then they actually have to get in a plane and fly it.
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Today you open the door of the simulator and when you step inside you are in a perfect replica of the cockpit of the specific modern plane you want to learn to fly, say a commercial passenger jetliner. You see the windscreen in front of you, with normal runway activity going on.
In your mind, of course, you know you're in a box mounted on springs and pistons and that's what you see through the windscreen is only a videotape of a runway, not a real runway. You know that intellectually, but it looks real. You sit in the seat, buckle up and start the engines. You here the engines start, feel the rumble and vibrations, see the engines gauges read appropriately. After you warm them up, judging by the temperature gauges and the smoothness of their sounds and vibration, you begin to taxi down the runway. You see the runway moving away behind your field of vision through the windscreen, feel the vibration of the plane rolling along the runway and hear the appropriate sounds.
Here is where the great practicality of the simulator training comes in. Besides just accumulating many hours of practice, your instructor can put you into various emergency situations. Two of the four engines may fail suddenly for example. Or the plane may suddenly rock from strong headwinds. You can feel the sense of acceleration and deceleration. You must struggle with the controls. When you do the wrong thing your plane crashes! You see, hear and feel it heading towards the ground
WHAM!!! There is a tremendous noise, flashes of light, and the windscreen suddenly prints out a message on the screen saying that you have made a fatal error and just how you made that fatal error. But in the flight simulator, you live and learn and fly another day. This is much easier on pilot's lives and multi-million pound aircraft than training too soon in the real thing.
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Train staff to manoeuvre
through the isles whilst serving customers
Train ground attack forces
to shoot down enemy planes
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