Exploring VR with PilotEdge in a University Part 141 Environment

Flight Simulators have become an integral part of the part 141 training environment. Reliance on flight simulators has only increased in recent years as the pilot shortage has increased the utilization rate on training airplanes. At the same time, demands by flight schools and universities have all but assured that training airplane production has lagged behind the needs of the industry. The ability to simulate an accurate replica of a cockpit of an advanced airplane has long been desired as aviation training is inherently problematic from an educational psychology perspective. Airplanes are loud, cramped, and operationally can be cost prohibitive. All of these factors lead to a desire for more advanced, cheap, and educationally beneficial flight simulators. Early simulators such as the Link Trainer operated pneumatically. As computers became more readily available, the focus centered on software modeling a graphical representation of the yoke. At the aviation education level, full scale mockups of regional and mainline jets are in most serious Part 141 collegiate based flight schools. Today, Virtual Reality (VR) is entering the mainstream vernacular after being a subcomponent of the larger gaming community and is showing potential to disrupt the typical flight simulator model of a traditional full mockup of a cockpit. Many flight simulators such as Microsoft\u27s Flight Simulator X and X-Plane are incorporating Virtual Reality. Additionally, many leading producers of after-market airplane models for the aforementioned flight simulators. In this research, undergraduate students pursuing a Restricted Airline Transport License were each given specified hours of flight training in a flight simulator with Virtual Reality. The students were told to conduct training flights utilizing the PilotEdge software, which offers a high-fidelity simulator of interaction with Air Traffic Control (ATC) personnel within the National Airspace Systems. The purpose of this qualitative and quantitative exploratory research is to gauge interest of student pilots in using VR in flight simulators. A second purpose of this research was to gauge the effectiveness of VR technology in their current state with differing software platforms (ie., Flight Simulator X, X-Plane, etc). A purpose of this presentation is to explore with fellow aviation faculty and research the benefits and drawbacks of particular software from the viewpoint of both the researchers and future aviation professionals