Direct Manipulation Interfaces for Flight Training Scenario Generation

We propose a new generation of portable and stationary simulation trainers that use direct manipulation interface technology for developing training scenarios. In the direct manipulation interface for scenario generation, the person constructing a training scenario would "point and click" or "reach and grab" components to 1) construct a training scenario and 2) dynamically alter a scenario as it occurred. The first generation DMI scenario development system that we will construct will be based on conventional DMI techniques, such as point and click, and two dimensional representations of the visual information. The second generation DMI scenario generator will incorporate virutal reality technology to permit the scenario designer to "reach into" a three-dimensional library of objects and events to view and select them. To construct the scenario using the virtual reality DMI, the scenario developer will place objects and events stored in the libraries of virtual objects and events into the three dimensional virtual space of the training scenario. The objects will be given their behaviors-- trajectories and timing -- by direct manipulation through, for example, a glove that gives the developer the ability to pick up virtual objects. We anticipate that this technology can be integrated into the wide scale distributed simulation systems currently being constructed.