VLA Experimental Resource for Testing Innovative Configurations and Lightings (VERTICAL)

Stottler Henke is developing VERTICAL (VLA Experimental Resource for Testing Innovative Configurations And Lightings) for the US Navy; a test and design tool that can be used to support vertical takeoff and landing/rotorcraft ship VLA design and testing at the test team members´ work area. This is being accomplished by utilizing MS Flight Simulator, FSUIPC and Java. Visual landing aids (VLAs) provide necessary support to the landing of aircraft on ships. For existing ship classes with fixed lighting systems, the ability to differentially adjust the intensity of drop lights, glide slope indicators, flood lights, and deck status lighting provides focus on different pilot cues during shipboard landing in a wide variety of meteorological conditions. Color is used to provide focus on different approach and landing cues in varying meteorological conditions. The drive is to allow for a wider envelope of operations for aircraft from ships. That is, it is desired to be able to safely operate VTOL aircraft in higher sea states and lower visibility conditions than is allowed today. In order to improve decision-making in this complex domain in an affordable manner, design and testing in simulated situations is critical. VERTICAL provides this solution by providing a test and design tool on a PC allowing one to fly shipboard approaches in specific aircraft, to the deck of a specific ship class, with a realistic view in day and night operations and under a variety of weather conditions, while providing an easy method of adjusting ship VLA components and environment lighting. VERTICAL combines an interactive graphical user interface with various aircraft and custom built ships which are controlled and rendered by Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. By utilizing Microsoft´s off-the-shelf simulator package, we are able to render extremely detailed three-dimensional graphics (with accurate physics) that simulates visual scene properties relevant for simulating low-altitude flight at l- ow cost, and with significantly reduced development time compared to custom tools. Users are presented with a fully navigable, three-dimensional environment (the Visualization Environment) provided by MS Flight Simulator containing the ship being targeted for VLA design. The environment may include other aircraft flying or on the ship, essentially the environment is able to replicate whatever should be simulated to duplicate realistic conditions. The visualization module communicates with the core (integration module) via an external system interface (ESI) written in a product called FSUIPC. The lights on the ship can be controlled via the VLA modification GUI. The VLA Modification GUI, developed as a separate application developed in Java provides an intuitive interface for modifying the VLA components