Thought it may be of interest - VR helicopter training at Army’s Fort Rucker
image.jpg
https://www.stripes.com/news/us/virt...weeks-1.603374
Always beware of the headlines ...... but interesting none the less
Thought it may be of interest - VR helicopter training at Army’s Fort Rucker
image.jpg
https://www.stripes.com/news/us/virt...weeks-1.603374
Always beware of the headlines ...... but interesting none the less
ALAM
I can't help but think that replacing actual cockpit time with VR is anything but a detriment to pilot training
Straight in there - nice!
That's the common initial reaction, and it's basically what these experiments are testing! But like anything with any reasonable level of complexity, the answer is much more complicated and multi-factorial than that initial response.
This huge topic is essentially instructional systems design. For example, in military vehicular training (air, land, sea) there are a suite of available media to train people with, each with different costs (time, money, people), for example: textbook, powerpoint briefs, desktop sims, vehicle training devices, full motion sims and the actual vehicle.
So think about: are you going to teach people to do pre-startup checks and switchology in the actual aircraft? Are you going to teach people meteorology just using a textbook?
If you follow this well-trodden path - it then becomes a question of what, and how much do you do in VR. Rather don't do anything at all.
USAF pilots not only have to fly a certain amount every month to remain qualified they also have to fly in the simulator. This type of training is much cheaper than the cost of flying per hour.
As someone who has hundreds of hours in the DCS A-10C when I flew the same simulator at Moody a year ago (and will again in January) Ratican (one of my real 76th A-10 pilots) walked away after he figured out he didn’t need to tell me what do to. So simulators VR or traditional screen/domes do have a part to play in overall qualifications. You can’t simulate a major failure of a system in a real aircraft safely so EPs are another thing that they train extensively in simulators.
@Snoopy - nice! You've got your very own quasi-transfer study there. Similar to this study
Have to separate out different sims. Evidence for the importance and effectiveness of full mission simulators (fixed-based dome, with high-fidelity: avionics, flight, systems modelling) is pretty clear now, even for military fast-jets. For example, RAF Typhoon successfully trialled (trial name: Pandora's Buzzard) a heavily synthetic operational conversion unit (OCU; equivalent of US FTU), where the students' first flight in the real aircraft was a ghosted-solo (instructor in the back, essentially as a safety pilot). Details online. Live/synthetic blend was not as extreme when the lessons learned were incorporated into tnon-experimental syllabi, but gives you an idea.
Major difference here is using low-cost VR sims, and the stage of training. But Snoopy's absolutely right, there is a growing body of evidence that they absolutely can support training objectives. It's matching VR to the right training objectives, and how much 'credit' you give it to achieving a competency.
ALAM
I agree that supplementary sim training is invaluable, but I think that you still need some real cockpit training at some point, or rather simming can't replace flying only supplement it.
ALAM
Fairly confident. If they did train someone using only simulated flight and then compared them against a classically trained pilot, using various metrics, and if the sim pilot performed as well as or at least at a similar level then I would admit that simulation can replace reality.
Ever been in a Level D sim?
BigJon (11Dec19)
ALAM
No, what's a level D sim? A sim in a centrifuge?