Education and demonstration – Vehicle operator instruction or testing
Patent
1993-09-13
1995-07-18
Mancene, Gene
Education and demonstration
Vehicle operator instruction or testing
434 30, 434 40, 434 44, 434 55, G09B 902
Patent
active
054336082
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle simulator.
Vehicle simulators are widely used in training or entertainment applications. One major area of use is in the training of aircraft pilots.
2. Related Art
In a typical aircraft flight simulator, a trainee pilot sits in a mock cockpit and views an image visible to him through the cockpit windows. Often the mock cockpit is supported on a motion platform so that the physical effects of vehicle motion can be simulated to supplement the simulation of aircraft motion represented by the visual image. Typically the mock cockpit is supported on a rigid platform that is itself supported on six hydraulic jacks. The hydraulic jacks are connected between three pivots on the underside of the platform and three pivots on a support base beneath the platform. Thus each platform pivot is connected to two jacks which are in turn connected to respective ones of a pair of the support base pivots. This conventional jack system provides six degrees of freedom and is the industry standard for motion platform support systems.
A variety of visual systems have been proposed for use in vehicle simulators. Generally such visual systems can be divided into two types, that is uncollimated and collimated.
In uncollimated systems, an image to be viewed by the simulator user is projected on to a screen or dome placed in front of the mock cockpit. The screen surface is typically between three and six meters from the simulator user's eyepoint and thus such systems are not ideally suited to portray images representing distant objects. Uncollimated systems are however often used where very wide fields of view are required as it is difficult to project images showing very wide fields of view using collimated systems. Uncollimated systems are also sometimes favoured for simulating vertical take off aircraft where it is necessary to train pilots in very low altitude manoeuvres. In such circumstances the short distance between the screen and the user's eyepoint is not a major disadvantage.
In collimated systems, the user is presented with an image which appears to be at infinity. In one type of widely used collimated system, the windows of the mock cockpit are covered by a television monitor arrangement incorporating beam splitters such that rays of light from the television monitor are reflected in a partially reflective mirror to a concave mirror and from the concave mirror back through the partially reflective mirror to the users eyepoint, Such arrangements present an appropriate image only to a user in one position and are therefore not ideal for multi-occupancy cockpit simulations as required for example for wide-bodied jets, They are used for such applications however despite the fact that two users sitting side by side only receive an appropriate image through the immediately adjacent front and side windows. A user looking towards a side or front window on the opposite side of the cockpit sees either a very distorted image or no image at all.
Collimated wider angle visual systems are known in which the cross-cockpit image problem referred above is avoided, In such systems an image is projected onto a back projection screen placed above the mock cockpit and viewed via a concave mirror placed front of the mock cockpit. The mirror is typically two or three meters away from the front of the mock cockpit but nevertheless presents an image which appears to be at infinity, Such systems now represent the majority of commercial aircraft flight simulation system but are not ideal for military aircraft simulation as the field of view in military aircraft is typically many times greater than that in civil aircraft.
The limited field of view problem referred to above can of course be overcome by increasing the size of the dome/mirror which represents the surface directly visible to the user, If the mock cockpit is stationary this is relatively easy to achieve but if the mock cockpit is mounted on a motion system the size and weight of the dome or
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Mancene Gene
Smith Jeffrey A.
Thomson Training & Simulation Limited
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