Digital planes flying in the real sky

Microsoft Flight Simulator planes are stuck in the world of digital computing. A German AR developer thinks there is another way.

Christophe Leuze is developing mixed-reality medical applications at Stanford University that allow clinicians to view patients’ MRI scans in 3D. This professional background gave him an unusual idea while watching his brother Matthias, who lives in Europe, a pilot and avid MFS, play on Twitch.

He wondered what it would be like if he could see his brother’s virtual plane flying over Stanford using augmented reality instead of following it on Twitch.

This is what a mixed reality journey looks like

Leuze took advantage of the Microsoft Flight Simulators SDK to implement his idea. He developed a program that reads the aircraft’s GPS data from the SDK and transmits it to a server. An app based on Google’s AR interface ARCore gets this server data and Mathias aircraft projects in the physical environment.

Leuze demonstrates his AR app in a video: You can see his brother’s plane flying in the sky from the Stanford campus, looping over the campus and landing on the grass again. A little later, the AR developer explains how the software works with Hololens 2 AR glasses.

Brothers are thinking of expanding

Leuze’s augmented reality app can currently only track and display one aircraft in real time. In theory, at least, there’s nothing standing in the way of the extended version that can display all MFS air traffic. Lewis says as many as a hundred planes will be possible. Additionally, a better server infrastructure has to be found and that costs.

“Right now, it’s just a hobby,” says Leuze. Airspacemag. “But since the interest has been so great, I’m thinking about how to expand the program.” Leuze’s AR app won the most popular demo award at this year’s IEEEVR conference, thus attracting a lot of interest within the XR community.

The AR app is a great example of a mixed reality concept in which The boundaries between the physical and digital world are blurred. Leuze himself jokes: “Whenever I hear a plane flying in the sky, I always ask myself: Is this my brother?”

those: AirspacemagCover photo: Christophe and Mathias Leoz

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Microsoft Flight Simulator AR: Digital planes that fly in the real sky Last update: 5 July 2021 by Tomislav Pzmalinovic