jet fighters like the F-35 Lightning II and F/A-18 Hornets and Super L-3’s services include turnkey schoolhouse operations that comHornets, patrol or cargo aircraft like the P-8 Poseidon and C-130 Herbine instructors, management, sustainment and support staff. cules, and rotary-wing aircraft such as the CH-47 Chinook and UH-72 The company’s products include L-3’s Maintenance Training InteLakota. grated Development Environment (IDE). This IDE is a real-time virtual Disti virtual environments also support maintenance training maintainer environment that provides high-fidelity interactive aircraft for the F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon, AH-64 Apache and MQ-1C structures and virtual avionics, support equipment and tools. IDE also Gray Eagle. offers representations of maintenance manuals and L-3’s RITE-Train The richness and complexity of Disti’s virtual environments ensuite of instruction capabilities. L-3 can provide full-scale aircraft repable training on hundreds of maintenance procedures, and in the case resentations for training tasks requiring practice on hardware. of the F-35, more than 1,000 procedures. “These virtual aircraft serve L-3’s maintenance training covers all types of aircraft: fast jets, as direct computer-based surrogates for the real-world wide-body aircraft, rotary wing and unmanned vehicles. aircraft,” Ariotti explained. “They facilitate operational “For example, we are currently developing the [MQ-1C] checks, troubleshooting and removal and replacement Gray Eagle maintenance training system for the U.S. down to line-replaceable units. The environments Army, on contract through General Atomics, and have have hundreds of pieces of virtual support equipment.” a long history providing F-16 [Fighting Falcon] mainte The functionality of Disti’s virtual environments nance training solutions,” Delisle explained. depends on training requirements and which proceL-3 training is provided for every maintenance skill dures need to be taught. Procedures dictate which code, including electrical/electronic, propulsion sysvirtual doors need to open, which virtual panels must tems, avionics, composites, refueling systems, fuels, be removable, which cables disconnect, which pins hydraulics and structures, he added. to probe, which support equipment is displayed and The company has recently been exploiting advances Frank Delisle which system schematics function. “Our software in 3-D scanning and processing virtualization to improve the fidelity of its training systems and transmit frank.delisle@l-3com.com provides traceability of this data all the way to the finished system, ensuring functionality meets requirerich training content to multiple tablet devices wirements,” Ariotti said. lessly and securely. This reduces training acquisition, For a decade, all these capabilities of VE Studio operations and sustainment costs, Delisle said. were available only when Disti engineers were under The L-3 engineer pointed to the value of L-3’s RITEcontract to develop virtual environments for mainTrain integrated and adaptive capability, saying it acceltenance training. At last year’s Interservice/Industry erates training by more effectively engaging students Training, Simulation and Education Conference, and giving instructors real-time data on performance of however, Disti made VE Studio available as a comindividuals and groups. This prompt feedback enables mercial tool. Ariotti noted this was partly in response timely, task-relevant coaching. to requests from nations that wanted virtual mainte“Our technology immediately alerts students and nance training but could not export aircraft data to instructors when a procedural step from the manual Scott Ariotti the United States. is skipped, done incorrectly, out of order, or in a manSimilarly, Disti’s graphically intense 3-D enviner not recommended by subject-matter experts and sariotti@disti.com ronments have traditionally been delivered through instructional analysts,” he said, adding that L-3 is seehigh-end, gaming-style computers at training facilities. But the coming significant interest in taking this training solution to maintenance pany has recently been working with Amazon to deliver its applicahangars for just-in-time use. tions from Amazon’s cloud-based rendering solution AppStream. This new service delivers an encoded video stream to user devices. Virtual Environment “Essentially, it’s an interactive streaming video feed that runs on any Web-connected device, including low-end desktops and laptops, tabBehind every great virtual training system is a superb virtual enlets and phones,” Ariotti explained. vironment. But making it easy for students to learn virtually is a lot Combining Amazon’s infrastructure as a service and VE Studio harder than the virtual wizards make it look. will allow trainers to easily produce and distribute virtual mainteThose truths are part of the philosophy at Disti, whose name has nance training in the form of “training as a service,” he said. long been virtually synonymous with creating virtual environments The virtual environment development process enabled by VE for aviation maintenance training, according to Scott Ariotti, the comStudio is critical to making training more effective than just a bunch pany’s director of global marketing. of game engines, pretty pictures and wow factors. “The picture is just “We’ve perfected the process of constructing these demanding virthe last phase of a complete virtual maintenance training applicatual environments by producing a software development kit that mantion,” Ariotti said. ages a database-centric content creation architecture,” Ariotti said. Doing it all right begins with requirements analysis and continDisti’s VE Studio is the commercialized version of the suite that ues with content development, on-demand and automated builds and manages virtual environment development. It starts by identifying and automated regression testing. VE Studio manages the entire producanalyzing project requirements and continues through source-data tion pipeline. It parses procedures and populates its database with all collection, automatic code generation, software-build automation and the needed objects, such as doors, cables, hoses and line-replaceable automated regression testing. units, as well as required actions, such as removals, installations, Disti virtual environments are preferred solutions for almost a dozprobes and connections. VE Studio then associates behaviors and en aviation-maintenance training platforms, Ariotti noted, including www.MT2-kmi.com
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