Bell Future Flight Controls
BELL FUTURE FLIGHT CONTROLS
We created a competitive flight simulator using a full motion base, the Vive Pro, and a massive database to help drive the future design of flight controls using data analytics.
Challenge
Bell is looking to define the future of technology and transportation. An important part of this is honing in on how current flight controls can be designed moving forward to be the most intuitive for the average user. To get that information, we needed to not only put the general population through realistic flight simulators, but do so with varying flight sticks to compare, and collecting a colossal amount of data. Once we had a platform to facilitate that data collection, we then needed to get the most amount of valuable user interaction and through-put possible.
Solution
S5D built out a fully networked platform, allowing for real-time data comparison and collection. By taking a traditional flight simulation concept and gamifying the experience, we had people trying to top their friends’ best scores coming back 5, 6, 7 times. We created a data collection beast disguised as a fun and challenging game and it worked to great effect. The final solution involved 3 Vive Pro headsets, each with its own motion base a flight experience, that saved data upwards of 15 times per second to a database shared between all computers powering the simulations.
Results
We have received useful data from multiple events, starting with CES of 2019. At that show alone, we had roughly 97,000,000 data points recorded that we were able to provide to Bell for invaluable comparison. This has become a key tool for Bell and is still being customized to this day.
