Co-founders of a Texas-based company called Thrust Vector, which does contract development and consulting for both AR and VR, used Oculus Go while piloting an aircraft and say they have flown “probably 2 dozen full approaches in full VR, all the way down to about 50 feet above the runway.”

CTO John Nagle wrote in an email to us that they used mapping software Mapbox along with the Unity world engine and “Oculus Go in this case because it represents the lowest cost VR device, and we wanted to show it was fundamentally capable enough to work.” In a video demonstration, Nagle is shown piloting an airplane with co-founder John Paul Sommer as “safety pilot.” Inside Oculus Go, an application renders visuals for Nagle based in the information supplied by “an open source ADS-B sensor called Stratux, which also has an AHRS capability (Attitude and Heading Reference System.) It uses a WAAS-enhanced GPS for position.”

“It is still 3DOF, but it is airplane-referenced. In an airplane, the headset rotates in 2 ways; the airplane can turn, and your head can turn also. We do the math to keep head motion airplane-relative. We do plan to use more powerful headsets in future tests, of course,” Nagle wrote.

I don't get the purpoise of this... Except for IFR training, maybe.

I would guess that at some point in the future with advancements in sensors etc. that one could land an aircraft in zero vis using this technology.

I would have thought it would be more suited to augmented reality than virtual.

Yep, and I suspect if such technology is implemented it will be as augmented reality before VR.


I just see the device presented in the OP as a "proof of concept".