All good points.
I am developing a prototype. Everyone I have spoken to wants to see one. However, the hardware is not cheap and I am 'ground-truthing' the concept with people in the field first.
Certification I am confident of. It does not change or connect to any of the systems in the aircraft. Except maybe via a 14V accessory socket. I am thinking the only issues might be RF EMR inteference, but that is relatively easy, it just means a higher grade of hardware.
Better? Well, you tell me. Picture this.
You are the pilot of an aircraft (of any type) that is in flight. The operation of the aircraft is entirely real: nothing is simulated. On your head is what looks like an oversized set of clear goggles, which are connected to a 'black box' sitting behind you. The black box is not connected to the electrical, control or other systems
of the aircraft, except perhaps via a standard accessory power supply.
When you look ahead, you see what you would normally see on that day flying at that height in that part of the world, plus something else. Overlaid on your vision is a view of a full sized 'synthetic landscape' that happens to be situated at an altitude of several thousand feet.
The landscape appears in your view as if it were a hologram. You can fly around it, and you can fly through it.
As your aircraft moves, your view of it adjusts to reflect that movement faithfully. You can look down on the roofs of the buildings, or you can go lower and look through the doors.
As you move your head to look about, the view adjusts to reflect that movement also.
It isn't really a hologram, because instead of being generated optically it is generated via software in the black box. You or your instructor selected that landscape for this mission.
The landscape is not 'floating' like a cloud, it is precisely fixed in place geographically by reference to a GPS system. This means latitude, longitude, and altitude are fixed.
The landscape is as realistic and complex as a good 'first person shooter' computer game such as Quake. This is because it uses similar software techniques and display hardware. It is constructed of geometric shapes over which are draped satellite images and other photographs. It is in fact a good representation of an aerodrome.
Why is this happening?
This is a training mission. You are about to go through a series of emergencies at low level:
- Total engine failure at the instant that you lose the option of landing straight ahead on the runway;
- (In a multi-engine aircraft) Partial engine failure after takeoff at the instant that you lose the option of landing straight ahead on the runway;
- Forced landing following engine failure at altitude but at varying distances from your target 'landing point'. The landing will continue on right until 'touchdown', whether that is on the aerodrome or off it;
- Partial loss of control at low speed on short final (for example as caused by turbulence, windshear, etc);
- Short field landings, over obstacles and onto a landing strip that represent the limits of your aircraft's performance, as if you were being forced to land at a marginal aerodrome in poor
conditions, by bad weather or a partial breakdown of the aircraft;
- Crosswind landings at the limits of the aircraft's capabilities, or even above them, as if you were being forced to land at a marginal aerodrome in poor conditions, by bad weather or a partial breakdown of the aircraft;
- (In a helicopter) Auto-rotation following engine failure, down to 'ground' level.
At the end of your mission, you have 'crashed and burned' several times following total loss of control at low altitude. You have messed up approaches to one-way airstrips and impacted into mountains. You have landed short through the fences, you have landed high and hot with no hope of stopping and with no option to go-around. You have flared metres above or below where you wanted to and hit the deck with enough vertical speed to destroy the landing gear. You have landed with enough sideways drift to destroy your landing gear. You have done this from all points of the compass and in all conditions of visibility.
You and the aircraft are undamaged because all of the above happened at a safe altitude, even though the view told you that it all happened at a _very_ unsafe altitude.
The physics of the aircraft performance have been perfect. You have felt the buffeting, the full scale g-forces, the ineffectiveness of your controls, the disorientation. When you stalled it fully, you fell several hundred feet in a matter of seconds, rather than small cue movements as in a simulator. Your stomach felt the difference. If you got into a spin, you felt the true effects on your inner ear. Your stomach felt the difference then too.
The performance of the aircraft was as per that aircraft at that weight and CoG position in those atmospheric conditions, rather than according to factory specifications and the standard flight manual as in a simulator. You can therefore be very sure about what that aircraft can and cannot do in those situations.
The visual feedback was far better than for those maneuvers carried out high above the ground. When you lost control, and the ground filled the windscreen going around and around, you had direct feedback on what you had done and how much opportunity you had to correct it. You saw the ground come rushing up, felt the compulsion to pull back on the stick to avoid it, but learnt to trade height for airspeed as the situation demanded. When you got it wrong, you knew it immediately. You worked up a sweat during the difficult periods.
The visual feedback was better than in a simulator because the horizon and the background were real, and the synthetic graphics were at least as good.
The aural feedback was also perfectly realistic. The engine noises, the sound of the airflow around the aircraft, and the creaking of the airframe as the loads varied, were all perfect because the aircraft really was in flight carrying out the maneuvers.
The point is that the educative effect has been every bit as strong as if you had been through the real thing, except that you didn't have to pay for the repairs.
Also, you were able to do some of these things more than once in a lifetime, so you could learn from them.
At the end of your training mission, you download information on forward, lateral and vertical velocities on a second-by-second basis. This provides an extra degree of feedback on your performance, particularly for check-rides where the tolerances on your handling of the aircraft are tighter. With further processing, you can replay the mission forward and backward to see exactly where it all went wrong. Your instructors or check captains can compare your performance with previous missions, other pilots, and objective standards.
All feedback gratefully accepted.