Enhancing Pilot ‘Mission’ Projection Through a Virtual Reality Flight Simulator: A Quasi-Transfer of Training Study

The use of virtual reality for pilot flight training, whether as a stand-alone device, or to augment or replace a conventional simulator, has gained significant attention in recent years. The primary purported benefit of virtual reality is its increased ability to achieve immersion of the trainee, which has particular benefits for visuospatial awareness. This benefit of the technology would appear to offer little advantage in the training of instrument-flying skills, where only the aircraft’s instrumentation needs to be accurately rendered in order that the status of the ownship can be known. However, given the wide-scale intention toward the adoption of the technology, it is likely that instrument flight training will be one of its uses at flight schools. In order that the effectiveness of the VR Simulator can be evaluated, for instrument flight training, a quasi-randomised separate-sample pretest–posttest design study was completed. The ability of this low-cost VR simulator to transfer the flying skills required to conduct an ILS approach, after establishment on approach, was evaluated with 44 participants. Results indicate significant improvement in participants’ flying skills based on operational (r_rb = 0.508) and synthetic (g = 0.844) performance metrics. The findings indicate that the VR simulator appears effective for the training of these skills, and that the immersion and presence are not detrimental, even when the primary focus is the instrument panel. The idea that VR is an effective tool for training instrument flight skills has not previously been demonstrated. Due consideration must, however, be given to the context of this study and the noted limitations of the VR technology.