Proceedings Article | 11 August 1998
KEYWORDS: Head-mounted displays, Prisms, Control systems, Head, Visualization, Weapons, Databases, 3D modeling, Speaker recognition, Target detection
With the emergence of helmet-mounted display (HMD) technologies, unlimited numbers of new flight symbols and symbol behaviors become possible. Rapid, insightful evaluation of these many potential capabilities is imperative. Because flight tests are risky, time-consuming, and expensive, simulators must be employed for the majority of these studies. Unfortunately, existing research simulators often are extremely expensive to construct and operate, dependent upon a team of technical support personnel, time-consuming to reprogram, not portable, and in such demand that it is impossible for most researchers to access them. This paper describes a powerful, but inexpensive, flight simulator specifically developed in response to these shortcomings, providing many of the features of simulators costing hundreds of times as much. The pilot-rotorcraft intelligent symbology management simulator (PRISMS) is easy to operate and is portable for use in a variety of on-site research, demonstration, and training applications. PRISMS includes an immersive, head- tracked HMD, with symbology in screen-, aircraft-and earth- fixed frames of reference, overlaying realistic terrain adapted from the SouthWestern USA database. The system includes cyclic, collective, and rudder pedal flight controls, a helicopter flight model, voice recognition and synthesis, 3D sound generation, user-definable symbol appearance and behavior, and full data recording capabilities.
