J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII

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plawolf

plawolf

Lieutenant General
t2contra said:
A better sci-fi method would do away with the HMD. Sensors will read the brainwaves without physically touching the head and the display will follow the head movement as well.
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I see next gen HMD doing away with lenses and instead using eye tracking to project data and images directly onto the retina. Gives essentially the same result as what you described, only with tech that’s feasibly within reach within a generation or even few years.

Such a visor will have tremendous dual use applications, and will become essentially the next gold standard for consumer communications and entertainment.

Imagine wearing a visor that gives you live data overlay for the world. Paired with 5G and the possibilities will be endless.

Massive consumer demand will turbocharge development and slash unit pricing.

You can bet that if China came up with something like this first, American and European firms will reverse engineer the shit out of it.
 
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Andy1974

Senior Member
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Why not just a regular VR visor? If you have sensors you can keep the neck fixed at all times, and rotate the pilots view to wherever he wants with some sensor/control. This would even allow the pilot to lie down and maybe remove the canopy too.
 
plawolf

plawolf

Lieutenant General
Andy1974 said:
Why not just a regular VR visor? If you have sensors you can keep the neck fixed at all times, and rotate the pilots view to wherever he wants with some sensor/control. This would even allow the pilot to lie down and maybe remove the canopy too.
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Firstly, the tech isn’t remotely there yet to be able to fully replace MK1 eyeball, and I think it never will for just safety reasons. If you are strapped into such a position, it would bring fresh new literal meaning to ‘blue screen of death’.

Secondly, even if you can get the tech to be 100% reliable, just how do you plan to control sensors to replace human neck movement? That’s a problem no flight sim or space combat game has yet been able to solve, which is why VR headsets are so incredibly popular and confers a massive advantage to hardcore players of such games.

In the short term, I can see maybe such a headset being used by the back seater of J20A/S to control a loyal wingman directly in combat. This would give the loyal wingman the best of both worlds of not being limited to -3/+9Gs of human tolerance while have the experience of a human fighter pilot guiding it.

This is how I would expect the J20A/S and first gen Chinese loyal wingmen to be used.

The back seater would given moderate guidance to the wingmen at BVR, probably along the lines of assigning targets and determining approach vectors etc. Then when it comes to WVR combat, the back seater will flip a switch on his dashboard to transfer his flight controls to take over a loyal wingman, flip down his VR visor and fly the loyal wingman himself while the rest do the best they can with AI.

He would also be able to switch between wingmen, so he can jump in to a fresh wingman once his has been shot down or used up all its missiles; or just to jump in an save a wingman being chased by a hostile etc.

With this set up, a single J20A/S could potentially be able to take on several times as many enemy manned 5th gens and win without much risk to the J20A/S itself. The J20’s stealth will keep it safe at moderate range while the wingmen gets stuck in. Even if spotted, the J20A/S should be able to more than hold its own, and can always just turn around and hit the afterburners and laugh as the F35s disappear rapidly into the rear view.
 
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AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
plawolf said:
This is how I would expect the J20A/S and first gen Chinese loyal wingmen to be used.

The back seater would given moderate guidance to the wingmen at BVR, probably along the lines of assigning targets and determining approach vectors etc. Then when it comes to WVR combat, the back seater will flip a switch on his dashboard to transfer his flight controls to take over a loyal wingman, flip down his VR visor and fly the loyal wingman himself while the rest do the best they can with AI.
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We already have reports of algorithms being trained in WVR dogfights and being much better than any human pilot
 
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Tiberium

Junior Member
Registered Member
plawolf said:
Theoretically possible, but we are nowhere near there in term of tech yet.

The core problems are caused by just how flexible the neck is, and how to determine which movements to support.

The neck can twist and bend a lot, so it’s very hard to design any kind of support that doesn’t inhibit movement on some way while still being able to provide powered support for all movements, and that’s the easier problem to solve.

The bigger issue is how is the neck support going to know which movements it needs to assist in me which ones to resist? I think that is going to be nearly impossible to do accurately and seamlessly without some sort of neural link.

Once you get all of that working, you then need to miniaturist it enough it can be worn around the neck; make it able to withstand 9Gs; and also ensure it doesn’t rip the pilot’s head off during ejections. And even if you can do all that, how much is this neck support going to cost?

I don’t see anything like that being operationally ready for decades to come, if ever.

Much better to make lighter HMD instead, and that’s the direction everyone seems to going, and I think it will only be a matter of time before HMDs are make light enough as to be no different to conventional flight helmets.

The key differences seems to be that China is being realistic and practical in limiting its use until that time, while the US has over promised and under delivered without a fallback options so pilots are suffering.
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Actually the consumer VR entertainment industry have already worked out a low cost solution: put a spring cord on the top of the HMD to hang it over attached to a chassis above the player. It serve the exact same purpose: mitigate the weight of the HMD and prevent the damage.

It's pretty intuitive and cheap, cost next to zero. I actually believe it is also suitable in the fighter's cockpit, the only modification is just the head of the ejection seat. Maybe it's useless, but I think it at least worth a try.
 
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