Acquiring manual flying skills in a virtual reality flight simulator

In this study, we explored the possibility of objectively assessing the progress in manual flying skills by student pilots using Virtual Reality (VR). Using a VR flight simulator of the Pilatus PC-7 training aircraft, fifteen participants without flying experience practiced basic flight maneuvers based on self-study and without receiving feedback. Relevant flight performance measures were normalized and a learning curve was fitted, representing learning speed and end-level. During some runs an N-back task was included as a secondary task to quantify the participants’ cognitive capacity. Interestingly, performance on the N-back was not a good predictor of someone’s learning curve. The correlation between performance measures and flight instructor gradings confirmed that, for a limited set of maneuvers, we were able to objectify the students’ learning behavior of acquiring a set of manual flying skills in a VR flight simulator. The results of this study show the potential of measuring learning performance in VR.