VTR Flight Deck – Built by Pilots for Pilots

Visionary Training Resources (VTR) is hitting a “sweet spot” in the community’s stepped-up efforts to integrate virtual reality training into pilots’ continua of learning. Group Editor Marty Kauchak and Holly Foster, North American Sales Director and Point of Contact, had the opportunity to immerse themselves in the exhibition hall, in several scenarios from VTR’s Flight Deck To Go VR Pilot Training Platform, under the guidance of Evey Cormican, Co-Founder & CEO and Rick Parker, CTO & Co-founder. Cormican noted the training platform is helping to integrate one customer’s aspiring, lower-time pilots into the Boeing 737 flight deck. To point, the aviation community veteran explained Flight Deck provides, “unlimited flight deck familiarization and exposure which is in a standardized curriculum. The student can sit and do ‘flows and procedures’ as many times as they like until they get it perfect. This allows for you to assess yourself and say, ‘I think I need a little more work on this,’ and do it as many times as you want. Nobody is going to tell you, ‘No you can’t do it,’ and more importantly, you are doing it right – standardized.”

In VTR’s market segment, the company is further focused on allowing the pilot to have access to his or her own “flight deck” with this completely mobile device, ideally before entering a training device. Parker added in a current use case, the prospective pilot receives Flight Deck-provided training concurrent with receiving a CBT package. Cormican explained if you “build a simulator-ready pilot” they should be able to sit in the cockpit “and know where every single switch and every light is in the overhead because they will have had exposure to the flight deck like anyone else has ever had – for as long as they want.” In the case of VTR’s initial customer, an EASA-approved ATO, the training enterprise initially wanted “a very basic framework.” The new S&T company is further eyeing a more complex, operational solution for that ATO’s ATP CTP (Airline Transport Pilot Certification Training Program) course. The CEO observed that while VTR is complementing, not replacing, CBT, the Flight Deck platform is also a complement to, and not a replacement for, training devices. Cormican added, “We’re not looking to ‘fly’ VR Flight Deck, but teach the students the ‘headwork’ required before they get into the simulator.”

The Flight Deck’s current hardware consists of the Pico Neo 2 eye headset, enabled by Tobii’s advanced, integrated eye tracking. Cormican emphasized Tobii’s Eye Tracker, “is imperative in aviation, because you really need to see all the details – the heading, course, altitude and NCP [noise compatability program] – all of these smaller numbers that are in the flight deck. That eye tracker is fabulous.”

The VTR CEO was asked to differentiate Flight Deck from other VR solutions in this market. The corporate executive remarked, “It’s the team that has so much experience with training, standards, airline pilots associations, checking and basic training, and the difference between military pilots and civilian pilots – bringing them together and standardizing them, so they are delivered to an airline as the same. They know all of that and see the ‘pain points’ from the inside. This is built by pilots for pilots!”

2021 WATS delegates may receive a Flight Deck demonstration this week at VTR booth 110.