Measurement and Effects of Transport Delays in a State-of-the-Art F-16C Flight Simulator.

Abstract : In recent years, the military community has developed advanced simulators for high-performance, fighter-type aircraft. These devices simulate not only high-performance aircraft but also complex tasks such as air-to-air combat, aerial refueling, air-to-ground combat, and formation flying. With the increases in the sophistication of these simulators has come a corresponding increase in computational complexity. This complexity has negated the effects of higher computational speeds available in today's computers; thus, the transport delays have remained essentially constant. What has not remained constant, however, are the effects these transport delays have on the training effectiveness of these complex simulators. Because these modern simulators tend to be very complex in nature and consist of many computers interfaced with each other, the determination and measurements of the transport delays are often difficult. The effects these delays have on the simulation of a high-performance, fighter-type aircraft are also difficult to determine. The Air Force Human Resources Laboratory, Operations Training Division is currently completing the development of a new F-16C simulator with full-field-of-view visual display and no motion system. This paper describes the methods used to measure the transport delays that exist in this system and some of their effects on the training effectiveness of the simulation. Keywords: Flight simulator, Simulator fidelity, Time delay, Transport delay.