Barco has unveiled the ultimate fighter jet training tool, a fully immersive 360-degree flight simulator designed to reproduce reality exactly as a pilot sees it. The dome is said to be the first flight simulator to give trainee pilots a full unobstructed 360 degree view of the world as they conduct virtual missions. Read on for a video presentation about the system, and to see what 130 million pixels worth of projection is going to do for the Israeli Air Force.
Called the RP-360 dome, the system is powered by an array of 13 high-definition projectors, which shine onto the outside of a 3.4 meter diameter acrylic sphere. The trainee pilot sits on the inside looking at the inner surface.
Barco engineers use lasers to line up the 10 megapixel projectors so that the different projected images are perfectly aligned.
One of the main technical challenges was to replicate the exact contrast that a pilot sees, stopping the brightness of the image throwing too much light onto the darker areas.