Operational and implementation issues for helmet-mounted displays in a real-time simulation environment

The increasing costs of wide field-of-view visual display systems are forcing simulation facilities to investigate cheaper alternatives. One such alternative is the use of color Helmet-Mounted Displays (HMD). These relatively low cost systems provide an essentially unlimited field-of-regard, possess a fairly large binocular field-of-view, and require only two channels of computer generated imagery. A study was recently conducted at the Air Force Research Laboratory in support of the Aeronautical Systems Center's Training Systems Product Group to assess the ability of this class of HMD to provide an acceptable level of training for various mission tasks. Many operational and implementation issues were addressed during the process of developing the simulation environment. These included simulation and mission scenario software development, HMD/head-tracker integration, HMD/image-generator video interfacing, cockpit occultation mechanization, and the measurement of and compensation for system latency. This paper will focus on these issues as well as present the "lessons learned" during the course of the study. The actual results of the evaluation will be presented in a separate technical report currently being prepared by the Training Systems Product Group.