Comparison of Cardiac Activity and Subjective Measures During Virtual Reality and Real Aircraft Flight

Abstract

Pilot training requires significant resources, both material and human. Immersive virtual reality is a good way to reduce costs and get around the lack of resources availability. However, the effectiveness of virtual flight simulation has not yet been fully assessed, in particular, using physiological measures. In this study, 10 pilots performed standard traffic patterns on both real aircraft (DR400) and its virtual simulation (in head-mounted device and motion platform). We used subjective measures through questionnaires of immersion, presence, and ability to control the aircraft, and objective measures using heart rate, and heart rate variability. The results showed that the pilots were able to fully control the aircraft. Points to improve include updating the hardware (better display resolution and hand tracking) and the simulator dynamics for modelling ground effect. During the real experience, the overall heart rate (HR) was higher (+20 bpm on average), and the heart rate variability (HRV) was lower compared to the virtual experience. The flight phases in both virtual and real flights induced similar cardiac responses with more mental efforts during take-off and landing compared to the downwind phase. Overall, our findings indicate that virtual flight reproduces real flight and can be used for pilot training. However, replacing pilot training with exclusively virtual flight hours seems utopian at this point.