Detection Threshold of Visual Displacement in a Networked Flight Simulator

Networked flight simulators facilitate team training by creating exercise environments and simulations representative of real-world operations. However, networked simulators are often plagued by connectivity issues, such as constant and variable network delay. Network delay can cause positional discrepancies or visual jitter in the flight path of a moving model that could affect pilots' overall perception of fidelity of motion. To reduce the visibility effects of network delay, image generator algorithms, such as model position smoothing, can be enabled. The use of smoothing, however, can also contribute to error in the motion path of an entity. This research aims to determine the detection threshold of visual displacement for a typical flight task, formation flight, as a function of simulated distance (100, 200, and 400 meters) and smoothing (no smoothing or smoothing across 1 second). The results show a significant increase in detection threshold with increases in distance. The addition of model position smoothing also increased the amount of visual displacement required for detection. The implications of these results, as well as plans for future research on network transport delay, also are discussed in this paper. Presented at the Advanced Deployable Day/Night Simulation Symposium held in Toronto, Canada, on 13-14 Nov 2007. Published in A Summary of Proceedings for the Advanced Deployable Day/Night Simulation Symposium, p25-29, Jul 2009 (TR-2009-121).