CTO Straight Talk - Issue 1 - 53

Believe me, if you were a pilot in one of
our simulators, you would feel like you
were flying the real aircraft.

When military watchers consider the
Pentagon's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, they see
a next-generation warplane and the world's
most advanced weapons systems in flight
today. When I look at it, I see the realization
of my engineering team's "If we can think it,
we can do it," mind-set.
The visual training platform that Rockwell
Collins Simulation and Training Solutions
created for the Joint Strike Fighter training
represents the state-of-the art in visual
training systems. We took requirements that
had never before been requested, let alone
conceived of, and made them a reality. The
F-35 pilots aren't untested 18 year olds.
They've got years of experience flying, and it's
been gratifying to hear them say the training
and simulated experience are unlike any
they've ever had.
But there's been no resting on our laurels.
In engineering simulation and training
platforms today, we must be able to support
joint, interoperable mission scenarios that
play out in real time and among disparate
locations. For Rockwell Collins, building the
effective and efficient simulation and training
platforms of tomorrow is as much about
seamlessly weaving together live, virtual,
and constructive environments as it is about
understanding the nuances of networking.

Therein lie some of our biggest challenges as
well as opportunities.

Trickery in the Cockpit
When you're in this business, your goal is to
train at the maximum level of effectiveness
and efficiency. The trick, made more difficult
when facing financial constraints such as
those of today's U.S. Department of Defense,
is balancing effectiveness with fidelity
requirements. In order to be judged truly
effective at training, you've got to be able to
immerse people fully in the environment-to
trick their eyes and brains into thinking the
simulation is real. High fidelity translates
to realism.
You might think creating this realism is
all about cool graphics, like those you find in
popular video games. Cool graphics do make a
big difference, but they're not the only piece of
the puzzle.
Rockwell Collins's visual systems comprise
four components: a display, the data used in
creating the visuals, the image generator, and
the projector. These all go into creating the
high-fidelity simulations for the F-35 training
I mentioned, as well as for Black Hawk and
Apache helicopter flight training, for example.
And most commercial airlines around the
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 1

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