Low-cost approaches to virtual flight simulation

An attempt was made to determine whether a flight simulator could be hosted on inexpensive computer image generators (CIG) and interfaced to a virtual environment system. Effective training systems provide a wide visual field-of-view through the use of CRT (cathode ray tube) arrays or dome simulator projectors. These display systems require graphics processing support from expensive CIGs with multiple graphics channels. A promising technology that could help reduce the costs of these flight simulators is head-mounted display (HMD) systems. Simple virtual world interfaces using HMD technology require only one graphics channel, providing the potential to use low-cost CIGs. The approach was to build a virtual world interface to an existing flight simulator application using an HMD. To investigate two classes of computing platforms suitable for use as the CIG, the flight simulator was hosted on a Silicon Graphics Iris 4D/85GT and an 80386/80387 enhanced with a high-performance graphics engine. Neither the SGI 4D/85GT system nor the PC system achieved the desired frame rate