Development of a 3D Holographic Flight Situational Awareness System

Recent inventions of Augmented Reality (AR) Head-Mounted-Device (HMD) devices such as Microsoft’s HoloLens have allowed certain innovations that up till now were only able to exist in Science Fiction. The ability to project holograms within a space have been used in the Aerospace industry since 2016, when the HoloLens was first released. However, the aviation industry has yet to harness the capability that such a device can allow. The conversion of a traditional 2D Primary Flight Display (PFD)to a Volumetric 3D representation of the PFD was explored. The 3D representation of the PFD was created in Unity 3D, and by means of the Holographic Remoting Tool the graphics were displayed on to the HoloLens. The symbology on the PFD was driven by live flight data from a flight simulator. For thisproject two different 3D PFD models were created one for a fixed-winged based aircraft, and another fora quadcopter. Two different flight simulators were used for the two different PFDs. For the fixed-wingedPFD the Digital Combat Simulator (DCS) World by Eagle Dynamics was used, and for the quadcopterPFD the AirSim plugin by Microsoft was ran using Unreal Engine 4 (UE4). Through testing it was found that both the PFD models assist the pilots to safely keep their aircraft in the air and also perform an emergency landing by only using the 3D PFD. Another conclusion made was that in its current state the3D PFD is ideal for Unmanned Arial Vehicle (UAV) pilots as a holographic Ground Control Station(GCS)