Multiplayer Flight Sim for Team Training

The military has been building flight-simulators since World War II. But, mostly, those pilots-in-training have flown alone, because full-motion simulators are so expensive. That may be starting to change, thanks to a good-enough-for-testing, NATO-backed sim which lets pilots "learn to fly together even when they are stationed thousands of miles apart."

Most simulators are so expensive because they use very high resolution displays and because the cockpit is mounted on top of several computer-controlled hydraulic arms. This lets a trainee experience every gut-wrenching twist and turn of their plane's flight.

Such realism is not strictly necessary for tactical training, though, says
Jon Saltmarsh, a development engineer with Qinetiq. "We need something that tells them how to fight with the aircraft, not just fly it," he told New Scientist. "You don't need a full-fidelity simulator for battle training."

So
Qinetiq's Mission Training through Distributed Simulation (MTDS) system uses a simplified aircraft cockpit and, instead of high-resolution displays, 13 standard video projectors produce an image across a wraparound screen. The imagery is clear enough to see who is flying alongside you, to identify terrain and to pick out targets on the ground.

Of course, the ability to give a pilot all the information he needs to carry out his mission almost instantly across thousands of miles can have other implications," the Register notes. "It's already quite normal for pilots handling remote Predator drones over Iraq or Afghanistan to be sitting in a comfortable base near Las Vegas... The very technology which Qinetiq and the RAF are using to train pilots may soon make flight personnel largely obsolete."

(High five: JQP)