A Novel Visual Landing Aid Toolkit using VRML

A software toolkit is to be developed to support Visual Landing Aid (VLA) design and development on the PC platform using Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) constructs. The tools leverage considerable corporate experience at Continuum Dynamics inthe application of VRML 3D modeling for a variety of engineering applications, including previous work on dynamic interface (DI) modeling and simulation. The proposed software contains features that allow for calibration of photometric characteristics ona given computer, and include the capability to interactively select aircraft approach positions for user evaluation of VLA lighting concepts. Software components are also included to allow the toolkit to support manned flight simulation trials inreal-time, using Ethernet network protocols and data packet transfer. The toolkit promises to save considerable costs in evaluating VLA systems in a flight test environment, through the transfer of many evaluation exercises to the PC environment.