high-gain tasks. However, we believe that no motion is better than 'bad' motion, so the industry needs to be very careful in order to make sure that motion systems that are being used are 'good'. And that is the purpose of the OMCT." The simulation industry as a whole has now embraced the concept and practice of employing the OMCT to be used as a tool to improve simulator motion cueing performance. According to Advani, the industry agrees that it should serve as a new global standard. Patel said that L-3 UK has been taking a very active role in the IWC Motion Task Team to make sure that whatever motion cueing test is developed is understood by everyone in the industry and that the industry backs it as a whole, and that it adds value. Since the OMCT has been shown to be a valid means of defining future motion system requirements, the formal acceptance of the OMCT process will be made official when it is published as Amendment 4 of ICAO Document 9625, the Manual of Criteria for the Qualifica-
tion of Flight Simulators, scheduled for publication in 2014. "Now we have a rigorous test that takes out much of the subjectivity," Advani pointed out. "Even though subjective tuning will continue to complement the OMCT, until a fully objective 'mathematical pilot' is someday accepted by industry, the yardstick is now in place to measure simulator motion performance. By providing the industry with an objective 'target', it is going to drive the industry to improve the quality of motion cueing, and we are starting to see this already, as some companies are already using it and seeing improvement in their devices." FSI has also embraced the OMCT algorithm technology developed by the ICAO IWG. It is a good way to quantify motion cueing as bad or good motion, Sammur reported. With the OMCT, FSI can also look at the simulator with an overall system level approach to increase its performance. So far, improvements in the tuning of the motion cueing system based on objective test results rather
than subjective pilot reports have been "really amazing," he said. "Until now, the tuning of the motion cueing system has been done through subjective feedback from pilots," Sammur explained. "Now we have this OMCT technology. With this new technology, we can focus on comparing the motion base and what the pilot feels to the dynamics of the airplane to the simulator." When John Van Maren, FSI's Vice President for Simulation, who is also a pilot, first experienced the motion system improvements based on the OMCT test data compared to the traditional subjective method, he was also quite impressed with the difference in simulator performance. "My initial comment was 'wow', followed by how did we live with what the industry has done for so long," Van Maren said. "It's just a night and day difference in the cueing and the realism. You can close your eyes and actually visualize what is happening just from the motion cueing. It was really impressive." cat
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