A Fully Immersive Virtual Flight Experience

The TrueCourse Simulations display, located inside the Pilot Institute booth, showcases a new prototype for a mixed-reality simulator. They are expected to become available to the public in early 2025.

Simulator technology has become increasingly popular in the flight training world. It allows students to build skills and confidence before ever stepping foot into an aircraft. It also fosters safer flying by replicating critical in-flight situations, including engine failures, fires, and emergency landings, and showing students how to respond. These aspects have been proven to create an overall more convenient and beginner-friendly training process.

TrueCourse is a virtual reality simulator manufacturer. Though it launched only five years ago, it has released several versions currently being used in the US Air Force Academy, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, and several other leading flight training centers. The software includes written and video lessons along with guided flights, effectively reducing student pilots’ time to solo by up to 30%.

Their newest and most advanced model features groundbreaking mixed-reality technology. It uses X-Plane 12 and a MetaQuest 3 headset with camera pass-throughs, allowing users to see their hands, the flight panel, and the controls mounted in front of them. To create a genuinely realistic flight experience, the base has 4 motion actuators with 1.5 inches of travel. Kyle Buffelli, the TC Sims General Manager, comments that this is an “easier environment for students to learn in before they go to a real plane, because a real plane can be kind of overwhelming for students to try to learn brand new things.” These elements, along with the virtual instructors for flight guidance and grading, make it perfectly suited for both VFR and IFR flight training.

Responses to the prototype have been overwhelmingly positive. Dacre Watson, a retired British Airways pilot with over 28,000 hours, used his first run with the sim to test emergency situations. He explains that “students these days don’t learn how to spin, and they don’t learn how to get out of difficult situations. And this, to me, is actually a very very good teaching tool. You can learn so much.”

Although flight simulators have become more and more common, this TC Sims prototype is truly one of a kind.

FMI: www.tcsims.com