This year's demo featured pilots in the seat of a T-6B Texan II turboprop training aircraft performing take-offs, pattern flying, touch-and-gos and landings at NAS Corpus Christi on the Gulf Coast and at Randolph AFB just outside of beautiful San Antonio, TX. If this sounds familiar, that's because it's exactly what we are doing for the U.S. Navy's Chief of Naval Air Training (CNATRA) programs at Training Wing 4.
One highlight of this demonstration was the seamless integration of two different AI-driven flight training technologies. TakeFlight's virtual flight instructor guides student pilots through their training regimen while ASTi's SERA populates the training environment with virtual aircraft, pilots and controllers. Together, these technologies provide an instructive and immersive flight training environment without distracting real flight instructors from their primary responsibility: assessing pilot performance.
Not to bury the lede, but a new addition to this year's demo was integration of the latest-generation Varjo XR-4 mixed-reality headset. The XR-4 is “the world’s most advanced mixed reality headset for simulation, allowing real-world and virtual elements to be blended together seamlessly for highly effective and cost-efficient training scenarios.” Varjo provided a seamless plug-and-play solution enabling SERA speech recognition and allowing pilots and instructors to hear ATC voices loud and clear in their headsets. The XR-4’s high-resolution displays show SERA-generated traffic entities sharply and clearly so trainees can maintain visual separation while in a busy VFR pattern.
Moving forward, ASTi is planning multiple future developments in the XR arena:
If you're interested in seeing a demonstration of all these technologies working in concert to provide the best virtual training environment available on the market today, we urge you to contact your favorite ASTi engineer or send an email to sales@asti-usa.com.