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Comment by gcbw2 | Hacker News Reader

This is a great use case for AR.

How do you mean?

All the AR use cases I fantasize about are those where it’s desirable to overlay data on what you can actually see— such as visualizing air currents and the like, while allowing your eyes to see the real world without a camera as the ‘middleman’.

Any AR flight simulator I can think of would be less immersive than what these people are building, since they’ve pretty much nailed the experience of being in an airplane cockpit. How would putting equipment on your face add to that?

I'd assume he means as a possible solution to the "crabbing" effect the article describes, where the "forward" view is centred on the plane rather than the pilot (your field of view should be a conic with you at the focus, and it's mildly disorientating when it's slightly wrong). I'm not sure if I'd call it AR, but automagic solutions could involve face-tracking, eye-tracking, etc.

Sounds like it would be a better solution for a full on VR rig rather than AR. Still put the person in the same cockpit, but the view would be from the VR goggles instead of multiple screens. When the pilot reaches in VR for the controls, there would be physical controls to match what's seen in VR. This would allow the pilot to have the correct sense of location with what they see.

Yeah, VR with either physical controls or virtual ones with force feedback (hands + arms) would work in a much smaller space / tighter budget. Technology isn't far enough yet though; it needs much higher resolution still, plus the force feedback is not there yet. I'm sure there's plenty of R&D projects in that area though, but, it's likely to remain bespoke / small volume / expensive.

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