Disorientation Simulation

Thank you for sharing. I was interested in attending a test of (probably) this sim but it was too far away to cover expenses.

Yes, I think the range of 3-axis accelerations and rotations plus instruments marks that machine can put you trough may go beyond what you will experience in aircraft using flight controls, so you will surely get some nasty experiences: while that does not make them real they will emphasis a heavy reliance on instruments or even the side effect of questioning them?

Pushing the yoke, while AI pitch up and a working ASI stay static and feeling acceleration and turn is not a realistic scenario but has enough to blow your mind ;)

I got my worse experiences of spatial desorientation 1/ real flying in clear day with a nasty cold (I know one should not but it was hard to say no to the instructor) and 2/ flying with VR headsets on a rotating chair with few instrument failures (seems from low resolution of gauges than actual lean effects)

@Balliol do you think this training helps with instrument flying, or is its main value in weeding out pilots who perhaps cannot learn instrument flying because they are too heavily affected by the illusions?

I wonder why that facility was set up. It must have been very expensive.

Ibra wrote:

Yes, I think the range of 3-axis accelerations and rotations plus instruments marks that machine can put you trough may go beyond what you will experience in aircraft using flight controls

This is probably correct for the aircrafts we usually fly but in fighter jets (and I understood this is a military facility) you can easily get these forces and nasty disorientation caused by confusing inputs.

Emir wrote:

you can easily get these forces and nasty disorientation caused by confusing inputs.

A dog fight in IMC or in the Alps will be fun

I wonder who has the job of cleaning up after each session!

… or is its main value in weeding out pilots who perhaps cannot learn instrument flying because they are too heavily affected by the illusions?

That proposition is suspiciously similar to the view, espoused by Major Isaac Jones of the US Army in 1917, which was abandoned by 1922 following research by Dr Wulfften Palthe among others (see following pdf). If we are to believe Alan J Benson, former senior medical officer at RAF institute and School of Aviation Medicine, the low prevalence of vestibular asymmetry among pilots would make that a wasteful objective. Benson in his Spatial Disorientation – A Perspective, pp KN-3 — KN-4, (pdf link) local copy writes:

In the 60s and 70s I was involved in carrying out tests of vestibular function on all aircrew who
were referred to the RAF neuropsychiatrist because of S.D. This work did show that, as a group, there was
slightly more, and marginally significant, vestibular asymmetry in those aircrew with S.D. than in a
control group. In some cases the demonstration of an asymmetry in yaw or roll axis sensation cupulograms
explained the illusion experienced by the pilot (Benson,1973a).

Benson, while later acknowledging the difficulty in validating the effectiveness of ground-based SD exposure, states in the context of instrument flight training (p KN-7):

Most now accept that flight experience should be complemented by specific instruction about S.D.
as well as by a demonstration in which the student aviator experiences some of the perceptual errors that
can be engendered by the unfamiliar motion and visual stimuli of the flight environment. Such a
demonstration of the fallibility of human perception is most convincingly achieved in actual flight, and
effective protocols have been developed for in-flight demonstration of S.D.. However, considerations of
cost and flight safety have led to the much greater use of ground-based S.D. demonstrators.

Dr David G Newman, in an ATSB research and analysis report, series B2007/0063 — An overview of spatial disorientation as a factor in aviation accidents and incidents (link), states:

[Spatial disorientation] is
a very common problem, and it has been estimated that the chance of a pilot
experiencing SD during their career is in the order of 90 to 100 per cent. The results
of several international studies show that SD accounts for some six to 32 per cent of
major accidents, and some 15 per cent to 26 per cent of fatal accidents. The true
prevalence of SD events is almost certainly underestimated.

John Richard Rollin Stott in a Jan 2013 article in Extreme Physiology & Medicine, Orientation and disorientation in aviation (link), citing a survey of UK military accidents over the periods 1983–1992 and 1993–2002, notes:

Of particular significance in this survey were the
findings that 50% of disorientation-related accidents
involved distraction and that, at the point at which
the accident became inevitable, disorientation remained
unrecognised in 85% of accidents.

That is a staggering preponderance involving type I (unrecognised) spatial disorientation so it’s little wonder the author concludes (p 9) “that a disorientated pilot does not experience an illusion.” Referring to a spatial disorientation survey of experienced instructor pilots conducted by Sipes Lessard in 2000 (see footnote 12), Stott notes the authors “found that, of those incidents rated by the reporting pilot as significant or severe in relation to flight safety, 75% involved unrecognised disorientation.”

That survey was done 1997–1998 at the US Air Force Advanced Instrument School, Randolph AB, and involved 141 participating airmen. About 90 per cent of them were active-duty military pilots and all but one of the remainder, a navigator, were retired military pilots working as simulator contractors. Flying experience ranged from 500 to 10 000 hours with a mean of 2886 hours and standard deviation of 1271 hours (Sipes and Lessard, pp 35–36). Results are reproduced below. The table summarises the number and percentage of airmen reporting experience of a particular illusion. The last three columns record the means, standard deviations, and ranges of occurrences. An additional table below, based on the survey, briefly describes the illusions.

Very interesting, thank you!