The Office of Naval Research (ONR) Live-Virtual-Constructive (LVC) training program seeks to safely integrate virtual tracks (display symbols that represent aircraft flown by pilots in simulators) and constructive tracks (symbols that represent computer-generated aircraft) into live F/A-18 E/F/G radar and cockpit sensor system displays to reduce resource demands and support new capability requirements in air combat training. In a preceding effort, the researchers identified a number of aircrew concerns about the design of LVC training technology and its potential effects on air combat training quality and realism. Based on these findings, the researchers conducted an exploratory survey to better establish and gauge LVC fidelity requirements. Thirty air combat training professionals completed the survey. The survey results, presented herein, will be used to guide LVC engineering decision-making and design trade-offs.

No abstract

Alan Turing developed the imitation game – the Turing Test – in which an interrogator is tasked with discriminating and identifying two subjects by asking a series of questions. Based on subject feedback, the challenge to the interrogator is to correctly identify those subjects. Applying this concept to the discrimination of reality from virtual reality is essential as simulation technology progresses toward a virtual era, in which we experience equal and greater presence in virtuality than reality. It is important to explore the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of the Turing Test in order to avoid possible issues when adapting the test for virtual reality. This requires an understanding of how users judge virtual and real environments, and how these environments influence their judgement. Turing-type tests, the constructs of reality judgement and presence, and measurement methods for each are explored. Following this brief review, the researchers contribute a theoretical foundation for future development of a Turing-type test for virtual reality, based on the universal experience of the mundane.

Education remains a severely unpolished domain for the application of human factors principles; although human factors methods and theories thrive in their application within both the learning and training domains. Continued efforts are needed to increase educational outcomes from the human-system interaction perspective. This paper shall continue to investigate how to apply constructs and theory from within the related human factors, human-computer interaction, and usability fields to the domain of instructional design. This paper intends to place human factors, human-computer interaction, and usability measurement methods among those used to evaluate cognitive load for the benefit of instructional design, following a new quantitative model for cognitive load. This effort shall assist in increasing collaboration between the fields of human factors and education, and make a significant contribution to cognitive load theory measurement methods.

No abstract