This paper describes the Virtual Environment Integration Laboratory (VEIL) of the Royal Aerospace Establishment (RAE). The VEIL programme is intended to provoke appropriate technological developments by exploring the human requirements of operating within a virtual cockpit whilst conducting demanding missions. Under construction is a light-weight binocular, colour helmet-mounted display with a wide field of view, driven by a versatile parallelarchitecture computer graphic system which accommodates simulated sensor images from a camera and terrain model. Prototypes of suitable display formats will be developed using a bench-mounted stereoscopic viewing rig which will also facilitate investigation of critical psychophysical issues. The complete VEIL hardware will integrate eye and head position sensors, three dimensional sound, direct voice input, and tactile sensors with the binocular display system. When allied to the ground-attack, helicopter and air-combat simulator facilities of Mission Management Department, it will enable the practicality of operating virtual cockpit systems in a wide variety of missions and tasks to be addressed.

Date Published: 1 October 1990
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 1290, Helmet-Mounted Displays II, (1 October 1990); doi: 10.1117/12.20970

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1290:
Helmet-Mounted Displays II
Ronald J. Lewandowski, Editor(s)