The pace of technological change can be excruciatingly slow sometimes … we’ve been waiting eons now for battery-powered airplanes that never need maintenance … but it’s relentless. I’m reminded of the college classmate who told me, way back in the last century, that she was making a smart choice studying to be a keypunch operator, because computers were here to stay. She was half right. The new technologies relentlessly make trash of the old. Now we have sneaking up behind us the tech of virtual reality, which makes me wonder how that will impact aviation in the next decade or two.
It’s already clear that VR is going to change the way we train pilots. The U.S. Air Force is experimenting with it, and found that access to VR tech helped students to learn faster. Companies now are working to bring the technology to the flight-training masses, including not only immersive visuals and audio, but also gloves that will provide the “haptic” illusion of touch. It seems inevitable that over the next decade we’re going to see this training tech expand its reach into our GA flight schools. How much faster and cheaper will it be for students to learn, when they have virtual 24/7 access to the cockpit of their Skyhawk? Factor in that autonomous tech will inevitably make it easier and more intuitive to fly a GA airplane, and the time and cost of training could drop significantly, while accident rates go down.
Plenty of pilots who slogged through ground school with a twirling E6-B, a plastic plotter and a sackful of paper sectionals may mourn the kind of visceral immersion those low-tech tools could induce. You spent enough time with those devices to develop an appreciation — the smooth feel of a fresh new chart, the subtle colors and details, the satisfaction of learning to interpret the strange language of maps and master the baffling “flight computer” — it’s not just nostalgia, all that sensory input added to the richness and romance of the whole flight-training experience. But those days aren’t coming back. Maybe VR will free us to focus on new aspects of flying, or enrich it in ways we haven’t even thought about yet.
We could take this to the next level, and wonder if VR could eliminate much of our motivation to fly, if we can travel virtually instead. Imagine a VR business meeting, where everyone stays home, but can walk around the room, shake hands and have virtual conversations — is it still worth the time and trouble to travel across the country, or around the world, rather than just snap on a headset and gloves? Can we replicate the experience of seeing the Grand Canyon, or going on an African safari, in real time? Maybe actual travel will become a niche market, reserved for the connoisseur — or luddite — who discerns a subtle difference.
But first, we are sure to see, over the next few years, the expansion of VR tech in the flight-training environment. How far it will go, and how fast, is anyone’s guess. How it will combust with the accelerating pace of autonomy to impact the GA world — that’s going to be a show worth watching.
