Greater Realism and Improve Cost-Effective Configurability
Ryan Aerospace launched its latest helicopter simulator, the HELIMOD Mark III PLUS+, at the Orange County Convention Center on 2 December.
This new helicopter simulator product is similar to the existing HELIMOD Mark III virtual reality (VR) device already in service with the US Army, US Navy and Australian Navy, among other users, but has full active control loading in the cyclic, collective and pedals controls. This provides an even greater level of realism and configurability but in a cost-effective way.
Chris Ryan, Managing Director of Ryan Aerospace (Australia) said that “this new product provides customers and users even more control over how the helicopter controls feel and reacts, offering greater realism but at a much more appealing price-point when compared with anything else on the market […] The control loading system is of very high quality and comes with all of the software and hardware that allows you to tweak a variety of parameters until such time the desired ‘control feel’ is achieved.”
Just like the standard HELIMOD Mark III, the cyclic and collective controls are easily interchangeable between aircraft type.
A number of other partners have contributed to the demo unit on display, including Varjo – a new kind of VR goggles visual system. The resolution of traditional VR devices has been just a fraction of what the average human eye can see. Now, for the first time ever, the Varjo Head Mounted Display delivers an unprecedented resolution of 60 pixels per degree – the equivalent of 20/20 vision. This is extremely important for flight training, where students must be able to read the gauges and instruments.
To add even more realism, high quality electric D-Box actuators are integrated into the device to provide motion and vibration cues.
APACHE and BLACK HAWK flight models have been integrated into the training system by SASimulations and the visual image generator is VBS Blue from Bohemia Interactive.