Evaluating Flight Performance and Eye Movement Patterns Using Virtual Reality Flight Simulator

Efficient and economical performance evaluation of pilots has become critical to the aviation industry. With the development of virtual reality (VR) and the combination of eye-tracking technology, solutions to meet these needs are becoming a reality. Previous studies have explored VR-based flight simulators, focusing mainly on technology validation and flight training. The current study developed a new VR flight simulator to evaluate pilots' flight performance based on eye movement and flight indicators in a 3D immersive scene. During the experiment, 46 participants were recruited: 23 professional pilots and 23 college students without flight experience. The experiment results showed significant differences in flight performance between participants with and without flight experience, the former being higher than the latter. In contrast, those with flight experience showed more structured and efficient eye-movement patterns. These results of the differentiation of flight performance demonstrate the validity of the current VR flight simulator as a flight performance assessment method. The different eye-movement patterns with flight experience provide the basis for future flight selection. However, this VR-based flight simulator has shortcomings like motion feedback compared to traditional flight simulators. This flight simulator platform is highly flexible except for the apparent low cost. It can meet the diverse needs of researchers (e.g., measuring situation awareness, VR sickness, and workload by adding relevant scales).