Rostami, M.; Kamoonpuri, J.; Pradhan, P.; Chung, J. Development and Evaluation of an Enhanced Virtual Reality Flight Simulation Tool for Airships. Aerospace2023, 10, 457.
Rostami, M.; Kamoonpuri, J.; Pradhan, P.; Chung, J. Development and Evaluation of an Enhanced Virtual Reality Flight Simulation Tool for Airships. Aerospace 2023, 10, 457.
Rostami, M.; Kamoonpuri, J.; Pradhan, P.; Chung, J. Development and Evaluation of an Enhanced Virtual Reality Flight Simulation Tool for Airships. Aerospace2023, 10, 457.
Rostami, M.; Kamoonpuri, J.; Pradhan, P.; Chung, J. Development and Evaluation of an Enhanced Virtual Reality Flight Simulation Tool for Airships. Aerospace 2023, 10, 457.
Abstract
A real-time flight simulation tool is proposed using a Virtual Reality Head-Mounted Display (VR-HMD) for airships operating in beyond the line-of-sight (BLOS) conditions. Particularly, the VR-HMD is developed for stratospheric airships flying at low/high altitudes. The proposed flight simulation tool uses the corresponding aerodynamics characteristics of the airship, the buoyancy effect, mass balance, added mass, propulsion contributions and ground reactions in the FlightGear Fight Simulator (FGFS). The VR headset has been connected to the FGFS along with the radio controller containing the real-time orientation/state of each button that is also simulated to provide better situational awareness and a Head-Up Display (HUD) that has been developed to provide the required flight data. In this work, a system was developed to connect the FGFS and the VR-capable graphics engine, Unity, to a PC and a wireless VR-HMD in real-time with minimal lag between data transmission. A balance was found for FGFS to write to a CSV file at a period of 0.01s. For Unity, the file was read every frame which translates to around 0.0167s (60 Hz). A test procedure was also conducted with a similar rating technique based on the NASA TLX questionnaire that identifies the pilot’s spare mental capacity when completing an assigned task to assure the comfortability of the proposed VR-HMD. Accordingly, a comparison has been made for the aircraft control using the desktop simulator and the VR-HMD tool. Results, showed that the current iteration of the system is ideal to train pilots on using similar systems in a safe and immersive environment. Furthermore, such an advanced portable system may even increase the situational awareness of pilots and allow them to complete a sizeable portion of actual flight tests with the same data transmission procedures in simulation. The resulting VR-HMD flight simulator is also conceived to express the ground control station (GCS) concept and transmit flight information as well as the point of view (POV) visuals in real-time using the real environment broadcasted using an onboard camera.
Keywords
Virtual Reality; Flight Simulation; Ground Control Station; Airship; Flight Test; Training
Subject
Engineering, Aerospace Engineering
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
